patrick.net

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/31/cigarettes-go-up-2-a-pack-on-saturday/

"When lifelong cigarette smokers Richard Rosas and Manny Mendoza confronted the reality of a $2-a-pack tax hike — set to split their wallets on Saturday — they both said it seemed like the right time to finally quit.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Rosas, a 62-year-old San Jose construction worker, said Friday afternoon, just after buying his regular $7 pack of Camel Crush cigarettes at Mary’s Market & Water near midtown San Jose.

Rosas knows how happy that “cold turkey” decision would make his wife and 10-year-old granddaughter, both of whom have asthma. Every chance the little girl gets, he said, she searches his car for the cigarettes he hides from her and — somewhat poetically — crushes them in her fingers in front of him.

“It’s not good for me, and it’s not good for her,” he admitted sheepishly.

#politics
#behaviormodification

That’s exactly the kind of comment backers of Proposition 56, which California voters overwhelmingly passed in November, like to hear.

Until now, California had one of the lowest tobacco taxes in the country — 87 cents per pack. Now it has one of the highest — $2.87.

And Proposition 56 did more than that: It also expanded the definition of “tobacco products” to include any type of device sold in combination with nicotine — e-cigarettes, e-cigars, e-pipes, even e-hookahs — according to the state Board of Equalization, which administers and collects state taxes. Eventually, they’ll all be heavily taxed too.

Expected to generate $1.4 billion in its first year, most of the additional tax will go toward Medi-Cal, which provides health coverage for California’s poor and which backers say shoulders $3.5 billion a year for treating tobacco-related illnesses. The rest of the new tax will go to support cancer research and smoking-prevention programs.

Statistics from the California Department of Public Health show that about 3.1 million people — or one out of nine California adults — smoke. Every year, an estimated 34,000 Californians die from smoking."