Re: your Sept. 13 article, “Cigarette prices could double”:
Let me see if I have this right: Smoking has dropped, therefore revenues also, but pensions, salaries and housing have not?
What I see here is a racist, prejudicial attitude against people who smoke cigars, pipes and cigarettes, and the people who sell them.
Racism takes many forms, and this is one of them. To single out one group of people is indeed racism. To single out one industry is prejudice.
I think it is time for people to rethink living in California. We have put up with way too many taxes, high salaries and pensions, high housing costs and frivolous laws so that the elite of society can live in their utopia on the backs of the middle class and poor.
As an afterthought, could it be these organizations are in fear of losing their jobs because if everyone quits smoking and businesses close, then what will they do?
Oh yeah, get real employment.
— Sandra Barnes, Newbury Park
After this punishment tax is passed shall we start taxing video games because they 1) contribute to obesity by discouraging exercise 2) encourage violence and 3) distract the young from their studies.
We could then use the tax monies to pay for the medical bills obesity will cause and maybe have programs in the schools to encourage some old fashion values like 1) knowing the difference from right and wrong 2) teaching the young to realize what is fantasy and 3) instructing them that they must take responsibility for their actions.
Then let's tax all coffee drinkers who drink and drive and thus are distracted. This tax could be for public service ads on the dangers of not paying attention to the road.
But after all those taxes are implemented we know the politicians will find pet projects to use this money for, like putting useless brick work on Highway 101 and calling it art.