Great Health News for Californians!….

Today's post:  Tuesday, 7-11-2017

*I supported Proposition 56 which did pass in California and went into effect recently which jumped the taxes on each pack of cigarettes by $2.

Of course I did that because I’ve found out in how incredibly many ways each puff of tobacco smoke sickens and kills. 

(People sort of know about cancer; but it’s much worse than they know. Doctors know about heart disease. But that tobacco & its smoke causes half of all Alzheimer’s cases too few people yet know. And, few people know tobacco & its smoke causes a big speed up in aging)

*And, I did that in part because fewer people smoking means that I & everyone in California will be subjected to less second hand smoke when the tax increase causes more people to quit and those who continue to smoke less.

Now that Proposition 56 has been in effect for awhile, the great news for Californians is that fewer people are smoking.  People who still smoke, smoke less.

*The article in the San Jose Mercury says that the retail per pack price has gone from $6 a pack to $9 a pack. 

This $3 increase is good news because it will cut smoking more than just the $2 tax increase.  (It seems the retailers are trying to keep some of their previous profits by adding that extra dollar.)

*According to the graph in the story about 75 million packs of cigarettes were sold in May, 2016.

After a jump to about 92 million just before the tax when retailers bought at the pretax prices and then fell a bit below the likely future average in April, the new level of sales is now about 38 million packs that was sold in May, 2017.

*If that level of sales stays the same or even drops in half, that’s incredibly good news for the California financially!

The San Jose Mercury article then wrote of people being disappointed in the taxes raised for MediCal that serves low income Californians.

They should be jumping up & down for joy instead!

Now far fewer low income Californians will draw on MediCal funds than before. And, there will be more funds available for those who do still need them!

*Studies of communities with similar drops in smoking find almost immediate and LARGE savings in emergency room visits for heart attacks.

These studies proved that smoking not only causes heart disease, it triggers heart attacks in people who would have otherwise escaped them! 

As I remember, it cut heart attack visits IN HALF!

Emergency room visits alone are so expensive, just these first visits no longer happening will boost the MediCal funds for everything else by millions of dollars in every part of California.

In short for every drop in taxes for MediCal of about $10 just this huge drop in ER costs will net MediCal about $100 in savings.

And that may only be half of the savings! 

The people who no longer had heart attacks AND the uneducated and the poor people who smoke and then have to be treated with MediCal funds when they get all these diseases, the costs on an ongoing basis will both drop by 25 to 100 %.

The conclusion is:

*Because of the effect of Proposition 56, YOU are now safer when you go to public places than you were last year.  (The big drop in second hand smoke is more protective than most people know!)

*And, because of the effect of Proposition 56 regardless of any new tax revenue,

fewer people will need MediCal funds AND the amount of MediCal funds available for those who still need them will go up substantially!

*Best of all, far fewer Californians will be sick or disabled by illness than there otherwise would have been!