 After a year of studies and design, it commenced operations on July 1, 1982 with an annual appropriation of $825 million.The new block grant program differed significantly from the former Food Stamp program in three major ways.First, the new NAP program was designed to distribute the benefits through physical cheques, ensuring that the benefit would be payable only to the beneficiary while at the same time reducing administrative costs, since the former physical vouchers ("cupones" in Spanish) were subject to storage and accountability problems, theft, counterfeiting and even trafficking.