California's Proposition 86

I smoked cigarettes for more than thirty years, Bush. How stupid is that? I smoked my first cigarette--a French Gauloise, if you can believe--at the age of thirteen, and continued to smoke stealthily, behind the bushes, in my boarding school years. I was caned for it once, by my "housemaster", a man nicknamed Tiger. Bend over. Six of the best. Didn't help. It eventually took me ten years to give up. I tried everything from arm patches to faux cigarettes to will-power. Nothing worked. I ended up regularly lying to my wife and trying to cover up the evidence with breath mints, sprays, deodorants... I'd buy a whole pack just to smoke a couple in the car, windows open, on the way to work. I finally managed to give up (age around 50, I'd guess) by giving myself permission to smoke. That took the negative part out of it, the "mustn't," "shouldn't,", "don't." It worked. For me. I know that others still fight that daily battle.

Anyway, I tell you all this, Bush, because I voted against the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, and countless other well-intentioned organizations on California's Proposition 86--the initiative that plans to raise the state tax on a pack of cigarettes from 87 cents to $3.47. (Oh, yes, Bush, I voted early, by mail--having changed my voter registration from the safe democratic district where we have voted for years in Los Angeles to the Republican stronghold that surrounds our beach cottage: I figured that Henry Waxman was safe without my support. Steve Young, our vigorous, articulate, and well-informed Democratic candidate in this area of Orange County, can use it.)

Oh, sure, I think it's wonderful to help people stop smoking, and I support efforts to keep second-hand smoke from polluting the public air. I just think tax legistlation is not a fair way to go about discouraging the habit.

Since large numbers of the holdout smokers are among our less wealthy and less well-educated citizens, this proposition amounts to nothing less than a tax on the poor. It's punitive. It's regressive. One argument has it that smokers place a disproportionate burden on society with their health care needs and the damage they cause by second-hand smoke. Which may be true--though to a far lesser extent, I've read, than the myth-makers would have us all believe. "Over the last 15 years," reads an opinion piece in last Saturday's Los Angeles Times, "evidence has accumulated showing smokers hardly cost society more than anyone else. Dozens of peer-reviwed studies through the 1990s... demonstrate conclusively that nearly all the costs of smoking--healthcare, higher insurance premiums, lower productivity at work--are borne by smokers themselves."

I'd love to see the end to this pernicious addiction, Bush. I hate to find myself on the side of "big tobacco." But this is no way to do it. It's simply unfair. The money will end up in the hands of casino owners and others who sell cigarettes legally without tax. And of smugglers and bootleggers, who will certainly find illegal ways to cater to the needs of those unfortunate addicts. I'd like to think that good sense will prevail in this case, bt I don't hold out much hope. It's so much easier to pass the tax burden on to someone else.