COLUMBIA - In the final days of its session, the S.C. General Assembly quietly killed $2 million for smoking-prevention programs for the state's young people.

The $2 million was to have come out of the $2.3 billion that South Carolina is getting from a national tobacco settlement - money given to compensate for cigarette-caused illnesses, which cost the state more than $300 million a year to treat.

The legislature already has spent or obligated much of its $2.3 billion settlement. Most of the money has been given to tobacco farmers, to rural water and sewer projects, and to hospitals, doctors and pharmacists for treating low-income patients.

Largely left out are initiatives to keep children from smoking. And there's no guarantee any future settlement money will go to smoking-prevention programs.

An estimated one-third of S.C. high-school students smoke - one of the nation's highest rates. Tobacco companies spend about $130 million a year on advertising in South Carolina.

"Of the 90,000 children 18 and under who now smoke in South Carolina, we estimate half will die from smoking-related illnesses," said Lisa Turner, a Columbia-based official of the American Cancer Society.

About 23,000 S.C. children experiment with cigarettes each year, and about half get addicted, she said.

Health advocates are shocked that the General Assembly killed plans to spend $2 million over the next year for youth anti-smoking campaigns.

"What we're doing is increasing the number of smokers," said Harris Pastides, dean of the University of South Carolina's Arnold School of Public Health.

By not funding anti-smoking programs, lawmakers are passing a huge expense to future S.C. generations, Pastides said.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had recommended South Carolina spend at least $24 million a year from the tobacco settlement on smoking-prevention programs. That spending would hold down the cost of future tobacco diseases.

The $2 million earmarked for smoking prevention was killed in early June by a committee of three state representatives and three senators as it mediated differences between House and Senate budget bills.

"It just didn't make it," said state Rep. Rex Rice, R-Pickens, one of the six lawmakers.

Rice said he and his colleagues agreed that other things, such as Medicaid spending to reimburse hospitals and doctors for treating poor people, were more important than prevention programs.

Rice said he believes in smoking-prevention programs and will try to get money next year for them. He also is a sponsor of a measure to increase taxes on cigarettes - an action proven to lessen teen smoking.

Health advocates say the General Assembly doesn't spend more money on smoking prevention because South Carolina has a "tobacco culture" that encourages people to smoke.