On the June ballot in California, Proposition 29 deserves your vote…and the campaign deserves our support.
The idea is simple, and we’ve done it before: Another tax on tobacco – a dollar a pack this time – to support cancer research and other fine things.
Frankly, I don’t care as much about what the tax money does. Cigarettes kill a hundred Californians, EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. What I like is that cigarettes will be even more unaffordable, and that has proven to be a major reason why people finally quit.
And that’s the point: If you smoke, you just have to quit. For yourself, your family, for those around you…as hard as it is, and I know its miserable, you just have to get help and stop. Also, a dollar a pack more might keep one more 15-year-old from starting.
Visit www.californiansforacure.org to learn detials, and check out the video below featuring our own Public Health Officer Marty Fenstersheib, MD, and Supervisor Ken Yeager, on why Santa Clara County is behind Proposition 29.
I think that cigarettes are VERY damgerous,but it is up to Individuals to decide what is good for themsleves.Making cigarettes super expensive will only end up creating a BLACK market for cigarettes.It will also create criminal behavior around that BLACK market! It is up to adults to decide what is right and wrong (within the law) for themselves.If an ADULT wants to slowly kill themselves with cigarettes(or anything else legal or not) that is up to each individual to decide NOT a third party!
Thanks for your comment, but we see this from a public health perspective. Afterall, second-hand smoke can cause real harm and even kill. It would be nice to see smoking go away completely, but that day may never come. Therefore, we must do what we can to minimize the harm to non-smokers.