Kansas has received its annual tobacco settlement payment totaling $55.9 million, Attorney General Derek Schmidt announced today. The $55,989,218.94 total, received yesterday, is consistent with the estimate that the attorney general provided last fall to the consensus revenue estimators.

Since the first payment was made in 1999, Kansas has received more than $1.1 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 in accordance to a legal settlement that resolved claims made by 46 states, including Kansas, against the tobacco companies in the late 1990s.