MONTPELIER - After more than two years of debate on how to spend the multi-million dollar settlement from the tobacco industry, the state will put to use the first $24.65 million payment next month.

The education and health departments have been reviewing grants to decide which schools and communities will get funding. The money will pay for programs to reduce smoking and to stop it altogether. The grants will be awarded in the coming months. In the past few years, anti-tobacco advocates and state officials have disagreed over how much of the annual payment should be used to treat smoking-related illnesses and how much should pay for efforts to reduce or prevent tobacco use. After months of negotiations this year, the Legislature approved the use of $6 million for programs to combat tobacco use and $17 million to fund the Vermont Health Access Program, the state-backed health insurance program for the poor. Another $170,000 will go into the tobacco trust fund to pay for future anti-smoking programs. Of this year's programs, $4.8 million will go to the Health Department for community programs to fight tobacco use and $1.2 million to the Education Department for grants to schools to establish anti-smoking programs. The Health Department will use the funding to set up local programs around the state to help smokers kick the habit and for a hotline smokers can call for tips on how to quit. Health Commissioner Jan Carney is expected to decide which communities will get funding in the coming weeks. Only four of Vermont's school districts did not seek funding, said Doug Dowse, the department's director of the safe and healthy schools program. Of the $1.2 million the Education Department receives, $750,000 will go to schools. That spending amounts to about $7 per child, which is higher than what the Centers for Disease Control advocates, Dowse said. Four school districts that are considered at higher risk because of higher rates of tobacco use - Blue Mountain, Essex North, Rutland South and Windham Central - will receive larger shares of the grant - $30,000 each, he said. The districts that chose not to participate are Bennington-Rutland, Hartford, Orange-North, Orange Southwest, Orange-Windsor, Orleans-Southwest and Rivendell. In the first year, advocates for smoking prevention expect to change the mindset in the state by making the anti-tobacco message more prevalent but an actual decline in smoking will not be visible for some time. "We're not going to see any change in tobacco use for a while. ... It's a major behavior change," said Darrilyn Peters, administrator of the tobacco evaluation and review board appointed by the Legislature. "We should see more school programs. More tobacco coalitions forming at the local level. We should see more dentists and doctors encouraging patients who smoke to quit. We should see more smokers calling the cessation line. And in a few years we should see less consumption of tobacco." The state is expected to receive at least $25 million from the tobacco industry each year for the next 10 years. And the debate over how to spend future funding is not expected to be as contentious. "It seems as if everyone is fairly strongly committed to having a comprehensive tobacco prevention program," said Peters.

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