Since the Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco began, most of its actions have left people who smoke out in the cold, literally.

This seemed strange, considering its primary goal was to help people quit. Instead, MPAAT used most of its funds to attempt to impose smoking bans in cities, thus ignoring those who wanted or needed help quitting.

Thankfully, Judge Michael Fetsch came down hard on MPAAT Thursday when he told them it could no longer convince communities to ban smoking and to turn their energy and money to programs that help people quit.

So MPAAT gets a second chance. And representatives of the group feel the ruling was a victory because it left control of funding and decision-making to them.

We wonder what sort of progress MPAAT will make, considering the judge also banned it from handing out any more grants because of conflict of interest issues with the recipients. It seems some board members of MPAAT were more concerned with the power they had than the people they should help.

This should be a wake-up call for the group and MPAAT should earnestly institute programs that help people quit smoking. Otherwise, Minnesota's court victory over tobacco companies will be for nothing.