LA Times: Tobacco taxes are great, but Proposition 29 stinks

◼ Proposition 29 includes a deal breaker. Raising money for California: Good. Discouraging smoking via a harsh tax: Great. Sequestering the money for a limited purpose: Bad. Really bad. - Michael Hiltzik/LA Times

Yes, our freeways and surface streets are crumbling. But the next time your front wheel hits an enormous pothole, you can remember with pride that California is the world leader in one form of highway maintenance: paving the road to hell with good intentions.

The June 5 election will give the state's voters another opportunity in this vein. The vehicle is Proposition 29, which would jack up the state tax on cigarettes by $1 a pack, generating some $800 million a year mostly for cancer research, with some going to related health and anti-smoking programs.

The weighing of intention vs. result here is fairly straightforward. Raising $800 million a year for the state: Good. Discouraging smoking via a harsh tax: Great. Sequestering the money for a limited purpose: Bad. Really bad.

But it doesn't serve the voters one bit. The benefits of driving up the cost of smoking to keep kids off cigarettes are obvious, but the structure of Proposition 29 is poisonous to the health of the body politic. It just hooks the voters on cheap non-solutions to our problems in the same way that Philip Morris hooks kids on tobacco. The first step to quitting the ballot-box addiction is to say no to wretched measures like this one.

◼ Most tobacco money California collects doesn't go to prevent or stop smoking, study says - Sacramento Bee

Between 1998 and 2010, just 6 percent of the money collected from a massive lawsuit settlement and from cigarette taxes went to tobacco interdiction and education programs, the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week, far below federal spending guidelines for effectively curbing tobacco use.