Move over, 007. You’re not the only one who has a license to kill. We allow the tobacco industry to spend about $29,000 each and every minute of the day to market the only consumer product proven to kill more than half of its regular users. Smoking is responsible for 90 percent of all lung cancer, 75 percent of chronic bronchitis and emphysema, and 25 percent of ischemic heart disease cases. These facts are not refuted by cigarette manufacturers. “Yes, we agree that smoking cigarettes, including our brands, causes lung cancer and other serious diseases in smokers,” Thomas Dubois, Director, Corporate Affairs, Phillip Morris Australia, reportedly said in 2002. Tobacco use causes 8.8 percent of all global deaths and 4.2 percent of disability.

These purveyors of death are manufacturing nearly 900 cigarettes per year for every man, woman, and child on the planet, and the entire planet is in fact their target market. Almost one billion men in the world smoke — about 35 percent of men in developed countries and 50 percent of men in developing countries. Approximately 250 million women in the world smoke: 22 percent of women in developed countries and 9 percent in developing countries. China deserves special attention because it consumes 30 percent of the world’s cigarettes, and with 7 out of 10 of its male population smoking daily, it has more male smokers than the entire U.S. population count.

The cost of smoking should not be ignored either. Costs associated with smoking are almost $185 billion annually in the United States. The global economic costs will soon reach $500 billion a year. Workforce productivity also is impacted. Smokers average almost twice the absenteeism rate of non-smokers.

Big Tobacco is big business, which I’m sure is the reason the governments of the world have not banned this illicit but legal drug trade. Health officials claim that maintaining the status quo will allow a staggering one billion deaths caused by tobacco use to occur in this century. I have to believe that we can do better than the status quo, which is why I will vote for Proposition 86.

I have never voted for a tax increase in my life because I fundamentally agree with Thomas Jefferson that “government that governs best governs least.” Giving government more money invites it to interfere more in my quest for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” I will, though, vote for Proposition 86 in November, not because the industry for which I work supports it, nor because it will benefit a number of important health service programs. Rather, I will vote for it because if by raising the price of a cigarette by 13 cents stops even a fraction of the 700,000 kids from becoming adult smokers or comes anywhere near reducing health care costs in California by $16 billion — both claims made by its backers — that’s a good thing, a very good thing. If voters approve Proposition 86, other states most certainly will follow California’s lead. Hopefully, it will spawn an international movement.

Your thoughts?