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Katy Grimes

CA Legislature: Tobacco is Bad, Getting Stoned Daily is Good

Cigarettes are now illegal in San Francisco for anyone under 21, and soon to be throughout California.

The Sanctuary City by the Bay has a long list of sanctioned banned items: trans fats,  the circus, sugary sodas, the Happy Meal and free toy, plastic bags, plastic water bottles, goldfish, baby chickens and ducklings, chewing tobacco, hollow-point bullets, firearms in advertising, wood burning stoves, drones, the Segway, hoverboards, and they tried to ban circumcision.

The list of banned items was all done in the name of public health. But these same San Francisco Nanny-Supervisors support public urination, needle exchanges, public nudity, pot smoking, free condoms, abortion clinics, and public sex acts are okay.

Smoking Ordinance, Bills and Initiatives

The new smoking ordinance was approved unanimously by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, just as the State Assembly approved numerous anti-tobacco bills, including also raising the legal smoking age from 18 to 21 throughout the state.

But these same lawmakers support the legalization of marijuana, a mind-altering substance known to be addictive.

Smoking has been found to cause cancer, and is apparently so dangerous, it’s now against the law for those under 21. But lawmakers want to legalize pot use.

The now-radicalized California Medical Association recently announced its endorsement of the state’s initiative to legalize marijuana: the Adult Use of Marijuana Act. The CA Medical Association helped pass the controversial law last year for mandatory vaccinations, and another allowing doctor-assisted suicide.

The CMA hasn’t said much of anything about marijuana smoke, which contains three times as much tar and one and a half times as much carcinogen as tobacco smoke. Pot smokers hold the smoke in their lungs longer than cigarette smokers.

But we’re not using logic, reason or facts; this is politics.

Everything is Economic 

California voters have rejected nearly all tobacco tax initiatives. In June 2012 voters rejected Proposition 29, which would have increased taxes $1 a pack to fund cancer research, anti-smoking programs and law enforcement.

In 2014 when Democrats had supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature, state Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, authored a bill to place a new tax on cigarettes of $2 a pack, with an equivalent tax on cigars, pipe tobacco and other tobacco products. But de Leon could not get even members of his party to pass the bill.

Currently, Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, authored a bill to raise the tobacco tax by $2 per pack. But he could not get the required two-thirds vote to pass either.

A bill by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, was passed to define electronic cigarettes as tobacco products, and ban the use of electronic cigarettes in public places where cigarette smoking is prohibited, and subject them to the same sales and marketing laws that cover tobacco cigarettes. “This bill is an absolute outrage,” Assemblyman Matthew Harper, R-Huntington Beach said. “It’s trying to define non-tobacco products as tobacco.”

Backers including the American Heart Association, American Lung Association, Service Employees International Union California, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the California Medical Association., Health Access California, and the California Hospital Association have proposed an initiative for the November ballot to raise the tax money they seek. Billionaire liberal activist and global warming aficionado Tom Steyer donated $1 million to the campaign.

San Francisco Values

In Sen. Leno’s San Francisco, where the annual Folsom Street Fetish Fair boasts “400,000 fetish enthusiasts spread out over 13 city blocks,” and meth heads, crack heads, and heroin junkies leave their used, dirty needles and drug litter in parks, schools, playgrounds and strewn along sidewalks, the Senator is focused on banning e-cigs and tobacco products.

San Francisco logic is the State logic: Sodas are bad; the San Francisco Naked Bike Ride is good. Tobacco is bad; getting stoned daily is good.

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