The University of California finally made the decision to allow researchers to accept funding from tobacco companies last month, the Sacramento Bee reported .

As I wrote in January, the issue had been brewing since 2004, when several UC campuses voted not to accept funding from tobacco companies, falling in line with several other prominent research institutions. The university has accepted over $16 million from Philip Morris and other tobacco companies since 2005, a fraction of the gifts and pledges made to the university, which in 2006 totaled about $1.3 billion.

Since this time last year, the issue has been passed back and forth between the Board of Regents and the UC faculty several times, and the decision was delayed twice since it came before the Board in January of this year.

Many UC faculty I spoke to in January were critical of president Robert Dynes, and felt that he was fighting tooth and nail to reject the ban. As Dynes is scheduled to step down from the presidency effective next June, it will be interesting to see if this issue stays on the Regents' agenda, or goes the way of the beleaguered president.

Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and long-time critic of tobacco funding for research, responded to me with only a one-lined Email when I asked for his reaction to the ban rejection: "It's not over yet."