By Tim Bonfield
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ads urging MTV to stop broadcasting videos that show people smoking. New efforts to enforce smoking bans at school events. A phone line for people to sign up for free smoking cessation programs.

These are some of the smoking control efforts that many Tristate residents, especially within Hamilton County, will encounter this fall as more money from Ohio's $10 billion tobacco industry class-action lawsuit settlement trickles down.

"We want MTV tobacco-free!" say members of an Ohio student group on ads that were filmed in June as the students traveled to New York City to present MTV with an 8,000-signature petition. Network officials accepted the signatures, but did not comment.

So within weeks, the Ohio Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Foundation plans to begin running ads on MTV about the petition, using a portion of a statewide $11 million budget this year for counter-marketing, said Tim Ingram, Hamilton County health commissioner. Ingram is one of 22 trustees on the foundation, which was formed to distribute about $1.2 billion of Ohio's tobacco settlement funds over the next several years.

Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana have three of the nation's five highest rates of adult smoking, health officials say. In Hamilton County, an estimated 37,000 people under 18 have smoked in the last month.

As school resumes, the Hamilton County General Health District will begin using a three-year, $1.15 million grant to expand anti-smoking programs.

Middle schools in seven districts - Cincinnati Public, North College Hill, Deer Park, Sycamore, St. Bernard-Elmwood Place, Norwood and Princeton - will get new anti-smoking programs.

The grant also will be used to create a smoking cessation hotline and to train 38 smoking cessation teachers, whose classes will expand programs already offered by various agencies.

For information about the free classes, call 946-7812. For information about the foundation, check www.standohio.org.

E-mail tbonfield@enquirer.com