April 19, 2007 -- Attorney General Paul Morrison announced today that Kansas received $50,210,767.89 in its annual payment from the 1998 tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA).
"We're happy to announce that Kansas received a slightly larger payment this year than last, but we do recognize that two out of three major tobacco manufacturers have withheld a portion of their payment to the MSA States," Morrison said. "My office will continue to fight to maintain the annual payments to our state."
Three major tobacco manufacturers make the large majority of the payments. Of these three, only one, Philip Morris, made its payment in full. The other two, Reynolds American and Lorillard, each paid only about 75% of the amount due and placed the remainder into a disputed payment account. The withholdings based on the Non-Participating Manufacturers Adjustment reduced all tobacco companies' payments to the MSA States by approximately $704 million, or 10.4 % of the total $6.75 billion in payments due.
Although the State of Kansas would have preferred that all companies make their full MSA payments yesterday, Kansas nonetheless received $50 million and the signatory States overall received over $6 billion in MSA payments, bringing the total paid under the MSA to over $53 billion since the agreement was executed.