Kansas has received its annual tobacco settlement payment totaling $53.3 million, Attorney General Derek Schmidt recently announced.

As it does each year, the annual payment will reimburse the state for funds previously appropriated by the Legislature to pay the current fiscal year’s cost of programs financed from tobacco settlement proceeds. Since the first payment was made in 1999, Kansas has received more than $1.24 billion from the participating tobacco manufacturers.

The settlement payments are intended to offset the costs of tobacco-related illness and disease that are borne by Kansas taxpayers through government-paid medical benefits. The payments are made each year pursuant to a legal settlement that resolved claims made by 46 states, including Kansas, against the tobacco companies in the late 1990s.