My opinion is that it is inherently counterproductive to fund government with taxes on things that the best interests of public health call for reducing or eliminating.

If you create a big new bureaucracy and fund it with a tobacco tax, then it is no longer in the interests of entrenched government to reduce sales of cigarettes because that would result in decreased revenue.

Education is the key to reducing smoking.

Editorial - http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/01/news/la-mo-smokescreen-20120601

Official endorsement by LAT - http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/endorsements/la-ed-prop29-20120427,0,5387779.story

Corrected links.

Cigarettes can kill not only the person who is addicted to them but also those who work and live with them while they are smoking. Tobacco smoke can even cause health problems for an addict's children.

Sorry. This is not good news. I sound awful saying it. But these are the facts.

People who are addicted to tobacco deny the truth about its dangers.

Sure. Not all people who smoke will die of cancer or heart disease or a stroke or an asthma attack. But far too many will.

Should a person have the right to smoke? Yes.

Should society do all it can to encourage people to choose not to smoke? Yes.

And this $1 additional tax will encourage a lot of people to cut back, quit or not start in the first place.

If chocolate bonbons (the really good kind) were very, very cheap, I would buy huge amounts of them and be as fat as house. I'm glad they aren't all that cheap. The fact that I can't afford large quantities of them is good for my health.

The relationship between smoking, cancer, emphysema, heart problems, strokes and a shortened lifespan is undisputed. We aren't talking about a ban or a prohibition. We are simply encouraging people to pay more for their addiction and hopefully satisfy it less often or quit altogether.

...kill people.

And this $1 additional tax will encourage a lot of people to cut back, quit or not start in the first place.

You may be right. The rate of smoking in New York City has gone down considerably in the last 10 or so years, attributable to high taxes.

My objections to Prop. 29 are all about what happens on the back end.

of killing ourselves with smoke and tobacco go up.

Taxes on cigarettes can quadruple for all I care - it's the bureaucracy the proposition sets up that bothers me. If the extra taxes were going into the general fund I'd have voted for it, but the last thing California needs is another agency with earmarked funds.