If Prop. 86 passes, price per pack could hit $7, putting holes in pockets and opening doors for smugglers and black markets.
Troy Senik
Staff Writer
California has consistently charmed the world with its immaturity. It is, after all, a land of languid beachfront communities, oxygen bars and actors in chief. But over the years, the specific form that this perpetual youth has taken has been substantially transformed.
In decades past, the Golden State’s ethos mirrored that of James Dean, one of its (at least intermittently) native sons. California was a home to freedom-loving peoples who embraced the small-government conservatism of Barry Goldwater and, later, Ronald Reagan. But somewhere along the line, Californians morphed from “rebel without a cause” to “cause without a purpose.”
Gone are muscle cars, football and cheeseburgers, replaced with hybrids, Pilates and tofurkey.
Along with our transition from Gomorrah-by-the-Sea to Tibet West has come an unwieldy fetish for societal marginalia — a fixation that is emerging once more with this fall’s midterm elections.
It is no secret that at some point during the mid-1990s, California met the enemy and the enemy was tobacco. Perhaps driven by an impulse to self-flagellate in penance for Hollywood’s perennial glamorization of cigarettes, the crusade began with a universal indoor smoking ban, just the sort of temperate draconianism that is the state’s hallmark. And thus the stage was set for this year’s Proposition 86, a proposed $2 billion tax increase that, regardless of one’s feelings about smoking, should be unconscionable in its venality.
Proposition 86 proposes to add an additional tax of $2.60 to every pack of cigarettes sold in California, increasing the retail price of cigarettes to an average of approximately $7 a pack for the state’s 5 million smokers.
Years of browbeating have already reduced California’s percentage of smokers to the nation’s second smallest (imagine James Dean’s response upon learning that we trump only Utah). The remaining 15 percent have already evinced a tenacity that is not likely to recede much in the face of new taxes, these being the sort of individuals who, finding themselves in the film “Cast Away,” would have attempted to smoke Wilson.
What will result, however, is the inevitable migration of smokers to black markets, be they Internet vendors, Native American sellers or smugglers.
If this seems like a disproportionate reaction than you (a) obviously do not know a committed smoker and (b) have not seen the California Board of Equalization report that already identified 27 percent of cigarettes in the state as having arrived via smugglers in the year 2002. With the primary mode of exchange being an illegal one, it will be left to convenience store owners who abide by the law to take the financial hit that will inevitably accompany the downturn in legal purchases.
Finally, there’s the issue of preventing future smoking, which has been the rhetorical mantle of Proposition 86 all along. It is nowhere close to true. Roughly 10 percent of revenues generated by the new tax will go programs even slightly resembling smoking prevention, while the rest will go to such noble causes as paying off the student loans of emergency room doctors (a woefully underpaid lot), paying the healthcare expenses of children from families that make upwards of $65,000 a year (with no onus on any recipients to prove eligibility) and funding the education of nursing students.
Like 2004’s Proposition 67, which sought to fund the health care industry through taxes on cell phones, this is a patent example of a well-heeled industry’s attempt at voter-approved larceny.
Prop. 85’s parental consent for minors to have abortions must pass because teenagers are not competent to make the choice alone.
Brian Chatwin
Staff Writer
There is an abortion measure on the ballot this year, and it is not getting any attention. Proposition 85 would amend the state constitution to prohibit minors from undergoing abortion procedures without parental notification.
This is not one of those slick, intentionally confusing pieces of legislation that on the surface makes the reader think it is one thing, when really it is the other. Prop 85 is as straightforward as you can get.
When Californians enter into the voter booths this November to consider this measure, they must ask themselves this question: Do I want to live in a state that sanctions teenagers (of all people) to stand alone to make a decision that has divided Supreme Court justices, senators, presidential hopefuls and the entire U.S. electorate?
Fortunately, Californians can approach this daunting question from a perspective other than the pro-choice/pro-life point of view. Californians can decide if they want to live in a society that believes that children should include their parents in all the important decisions: What car should I buy? Where should I go to college? Should I have an abortion? You know … the common questions every teenage girl has. Proposition 85 eliminates parents from doing what they are morally and naturally charged to do — parent their offspring.
Parental notification is not an unreasonable standard. It forces a young girl to have a hard conversation with her parents. There is a 100 percent chance that every parent will flip out when their teenage daughter says, “I am pregnant.” That conversation is important to have. Yes it’s tough — but the tough things in life should not be shirked.
If a young girl is pregnant, it is imperative that parent and child sit down, and after the yelling and crying subsides, have maybe their first grown-up conversation. The parent might discover that the girl is heading down a perilous path that only the wisdom of an adult can help her avoid.
Certainly if a teenage girl finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy, she has already made a few mistakes. Concealing these mistakes by sneaking into an abortion clinic will not help her — but cause irreparable harm.
The problem with those against Prop 85 is that they treat teenagers as rational actors.
Teenagers are anything but rational. Both the reader and author were both teenagers once — we both know how irrational we were as teenagers.
For opponents of Prop 85 to think that a teenage girl can make a choice as complex as this, on her own, foolishly ignores who a teenage girl is. Teenagers are impetuous and stupid. They do dumb things.
Empowering them with the ability to make such a big decision without parental notification is equally dumb.
Admittedly, there are cases where parental notification will exacerbate an abusive home life — but the law has taken that into consideration. If abuse is prevalent at home and more harm would be done to the girl by informing her parents of her condition — she is allowed the right to appeal to a family court. The court, looking out for her best interest, will be a an optimal position to not only permit the abortion if she chooses, but to steer the girl toward agencies and organizations that can assist her through her troubled teenaged years.
The fundamental question in Prop 85 proposition is simple and free from the politicking of the abortion debate:
Do Californians want to live in a state that allows their children to have abortions without parental notification?
Hopefully voters will answer with no.
Submitted 10-05-2006