I’ve spent a lot of time this election cycle talking about measures 1 (oil trust fund) and 2 (50% cut in state income taxes, 15% cut for businesses), but one thing I haven’t written about a lot is measure 3.

Measure 3 would use North Dakota’s tobacco settlement money to create a trust fund to perpetually fund anti-tobacco initiatives in the state.  But the statute wouldn’t just stop there.  It would also require that North Dakota keep spending on anti-tobacco initiatives at leveled mandated by the Centers for Disease Control, and if there’s not enough money in the anti-tobacco trust fund this measure would set up then that money will come from (bizarrely enough) the state’s water projects funds.

That’s right.  Once the nanny staters got done burning through the tobacco settlement money, they’d be spending money that’s supposed to go to water infrastructure in the state.

Here’s a summary of the measure provided by the National Taxpayer’s Union:

Statutory Measure No. 3 would require North Dakota to fund smoking cessation programs “at a level equal to or greater than the Centers for Disease Control recommended funding level.” If there is not enough money in the tobacco settlement fund to cover this mandate, resources would be siphoned away from a state water projects fund.

Measure 3 is a bad, bad idea.  Not only would it mandate government projects aimed at telling us how to live our lives, but it would also mandate that we taxpayers foot the bill for it once the tobacco settlement money gets used.

I’m not a smoker, myself.  I don’t enjoy patronizing businesses that allow smoking and I avoid them whenever I can.  But that being said, I don’t think a citizen’s decision to smoke is any business of the government (no more than drinking alcohol was the government’s business during the prohibition era) and I certainly don’t like the idea of creating a perpetual funding machine to underwrite these nanny state projects.