The tobacco companies must be pleased at how the landmark anti-smoking settlement made 10 years ago with 46 states is working out.

Implicit in the 1998 settlement, which exempts the tobacco companies from most forms of litigation, was that the states would spend a good portion of the $294 billion they'd be divvying up over the next 25 years on anti-smoking campaigns.

Sadly, on average only 4 percent of that money has been used to campaign against smoking. South Carolina this year didn't devote one dime to the program.

Small wonder that after several years of decline, teenage smoking in most states has begun to pick up again. That's good news for Big Tobacco -- it makes it easier for them to recruit new smokers.

In addition to anti-smoking programs, the states were also expected to spend billions to fight tobacco-related illnesses. Expressing widespread expectations at the time, one of the state attorneys-general who negotiated the pact said, "We should spend this money to fund cancer research, offer health insurance to the poor, keep kids from smoking and arrest those who sell tobacco to our children."

Yet, of the $61.5 billion the 46 states shared between 2000 and 2006, only 30 percent went toward health care, says the federal Government Accountability Office. That's pathetic.

The other 70 percent or so of the money has been spent on everything but health care.

Some of the spending might have been for good causes, such as boosting college scholarships, improving schools, hiring more police, etc., but it shouldn't have come out of tobacco settlement money.

Especially shameful was the money spent on "bridge to nowhere" programs such as buying new carts and sprinklers for a New York golf course, and for tax breaks in Illinois and Ohio.

Most, if not all, of the states involved in the settlement are having an awful time in the current economic downturn maintaining their Medicaid obligations and health insurance programs for kids. Had they been spending their tobacco money as originally intended, they wouldn't be having that problem.

This newspaper was one among many critics who pointed out 10 years ago that, though we approved of the settlement in principle, we doubted very much that the money would be spent as promised.

Politicians are notorious for breaking promises, and we suspected they'd pull a bait-and-switch again.

This is one time we wish we'd been wrong.