Cigarette tax burns me up

I am baffled by this cigarette tax. It seems the main reason for the tax is to make teens stop smoking. Let’s double the cost of cigarettes to teens. Wait a minute, it is illegal for teens to buy tobacco. How do we collect a tax from them? Rather a conundrum and redundant to have both.

If saving our youth is a main goal, there should be many more taxes. It is illegal for teens to buy alcohol; this is the drug of choice for teens. Why don’t we have a 20 percent tax on alcohol? The California Department of Health has shown that fat and obese people are now costing the health care system more than smokers.

According to statistics, 24 percent of adults and 35 percent of teens are fat or obese in California; 11.9 percent of adults and 6.6 percent of teens smoke. Where is the fattening-food tax to save our teens? Amazing that it is constitutional for 88 percent of the people to vote against 12 percent. It must be the new American way to legally discriminate.

This story was originally published August 23, 2016 at 1:57 PM with the headline "Cigarette tax burns me up."