Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said this past week that if Mississippi lets its anti-smoking programs fade away, “more kids will smoke, more citizens of Mississippi will die from cancer, and Mississippi’s taxpayers will pay more in health care costs.”

The question now is whether anti-smoking efforts will survive, through either the Partnership or new state-sponsored programs — or whether Moore’s critics will dismantle the health programs and make Fordice’s words about Mississippi’s tobacco prophetic: “Any idiot can see it’s all about lawyers’ fees. Public health has been a smoke screen.”