The tobacco industry is beyond clever. Their cunning and savvy in manipulating people, governments, media and markets are so enormous that the account of their mischief has earned at least one historian a Pulitzer Prize.
And, they are at it again when they attack Proposition 29. Back in 1998 The Washington Post National Weekly Edition published an article (click here to view it) detailing how effective California’s advertising campaigns had been in curbing teen smoking. This campaign reduced teen smoking so dramtacally that the tobacco industry engaged in a surreptitious campaign to divert tobacco tax dollars from anti-smoking advertising to smoking-related health care. (My scanner back in 1998 was pretty bad.) By pitting these two factions of the public health sector, they wreaked much havoc.
Their advertising against Proposition 29 is no different. They know that the additional advertising funded by Prop 29 taxes may well put the nail in the coffin of smoking in California. Don’t buy their lies. Vote for Prop 29. It will save countless fortunes and lives in twenty years in health care dividends.
Don’t be fooled by the anti-29 advertising. Vote yes on this measure and make sure that the price that people pay for tobacco is enough to cover the medical mayhem that this scourge causes.