To a smoker, a single cigarette means a five minute break. It also means 20 milligrams of nicotine, 7,000 chemicals, and about 30 cents. But if Proposition 56 passes, one thing will change: a single cigarette will cost about 40 cents in California.
The proposed tobacco tax is the latest step in trying to stop Californians from smoking. Back in 1995, the state made it illegal to smoke indoors. Brandon Scott, from San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood, believes that was an effective move. He's been smoking since he was a teenager, and admits that once or twice a year he does think about quitting.
Scott spends about 30 dollars a month on tobacco and says raising the tax by $2 dollars a pack would not make him consider quitting. He rolls his own cigarettes, which makes it cheaper. “If you were to make it a 20 dollars per pack tax, I would probably consider that a little bit more,” Scott says.
Right now, the Federal government charges a tax of $1.01 per pack of cigarettes. The state of California charges an additional tax of 87 cents per pack. That’s one of the lowest tobacco taxes in the country, for now.
The arguments
Mark Hinkle, president of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association, thinks the state should not try to make money on the habits of smokers. Currently, only 12% of adult Californians smoke, which is the lowest percentage in the country, excepting the state of Utah. Hinkle believes the declining number of smokers and declining tax revenues are the real reasons behind the tax hike. “So in order to maintain their bureaucracy,” Hinkle argues, “they have to come back with a 1.3 billion dollar tax increase.”
About 650 million packs of tobacco products are sold in California each year. Tobacco companies don’t want those numbers to drop, so they’ve put more than 56 million dollars into the “No” campaign. The “Yes” side has spent $21 million. Nevertheless, Hinkle says he thinks Prop 56 will be approved.
“The vast majority of people in California, they don’t smoke, and they’re not going to pay the tax,” he says, adding that this tax is going to be forced on people who can least afford it: impoverished people and immigrants.
One of the most pointed arguments of the “No” campaign is that only 13% of the funds raised will go toward programs to stop smoking. But assemblyman David Chiu from San Francisco calls that an absolute lie by the tobacco industry.
“Money that is raised from this initiative is going to go directly to public health programs that support our lowest income Californians to give them access to health care,” Chiu says. In fact, the vast majority of money raised from Prop 56 would go toward creating a healthcare fund to help with tobacco-related diseases.
A street-level perspective
On Taraval Street in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset district, about a dozen stores sell cigarettes. Most of the shop owners don’t believe the proposed tax will affect their tobacco sales. But one of them said he already stopped selling smokes because there are too many regulations.
“I think it is ridiculous. Almost every year they have been raising it,” says Maria Kaprielian, who has worked at a store called Linda’s Liquor for 20 years. “I know my smokers, so they are going to shop around to see who offers the cheapest pack of cigarettes, and they’ll still buy it.”
Kaprielian says she doesn’t believe they will quit. And she won’t quit.
“Addiction is addiction,” she says. “It doesn’t matter how much they raise it. They’re still addicted, and they are going to buy it regardless.”
It may not make current smokers stop smoking, says Assembly member David Chiu, but “it will convince a lot of young people today, tomorrow, years from now to not smoke. And we do hope on the margins that there are some folks who will decide not to smoke because of this.”
A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the tax on cigarettes would have to double to reduce the number of smokers by just five percent. It’s tough to quit.
Should California make addicts pay, in order to prevent others from falling victim to this addiction? That's the difficult question at the heart of Proposition 56.
