Monterey County is behind the curve again on annual tobacco report card.

The 16th annual State of Tobacco Control grades by the American Lung Association are out. They spell good news for California, but bad news for Monterey County for a third year in a row.

First, the good news: California voters passed Proposition 56 in 2016, raising the tobacco tax in April 2017. Cities around the state were able to take advantage of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to finance more aggressive tobacco control programs.

A record number of 10 communities improved their overall scorecard grades to an A, and more than a dozen went from an F to an A in at least one of several policy areas tracked.

The American Lung Association also touts that 17 fewer communities received an overall F grade as compared to 2016.

Monterey County’s grades remained pretty much the same as last year: While Carmel, Monterey, Salinas and unincorporated Monterey County received Cs, the rest of the cities in Monterey County got Fs.

Most cities got ones and zeros when it came to regulating smoke-free outdoor air, smoke-free housing and reducing the sales of tobacco products, the three main criteria for the scoring on a scale of zero to 10.

New to this year's report card is the ability to look up individual cities to see how they rate at stateoftobaccocontrol.org/california2018citysearch.

Carmel and Salinas managed to score Cs by getting As on implementing licenses for tobacco retailers.

Monterey also got a C but received more points than Carmel and Salinas. It got a C in regulating smoke-free outdoor air and an A for licensing. It also got a F in the area of smoke-free housing.