Court Orders California Governor to Restore Antismoking Media Campaign Funding

A CALIFORNIA Superior Court judge has ordered Governor Pete Wilson and Molly J. Coye, MD, MPH, director of the Department of Health Services, to restore the funding they recently slashed from California's widely acclaimed antismoking media campaign. In his verbal decision on April 24, Sacramento Superior Court Judge James Ford told Coye that neither she nor the governor has the authority to withhold $16 million mandated by law for antismoking television and print advertising. California's deputy attorney general, Eugene Hill, who argued the case for the governor and the Department of Health Services, says they must wait to see the judge's written ruling before deciding whether to appeal the decision. The lawsuit, which was brought by the American Lung Association of California, is the latest round in what is being described as an increasingly ugly political fight over cigarette tax revenues earmarked for antitobacco programs by California's Proposition 99. (See