Wolf's Head Member, Billionaire Tom Steyer, Launches Campaign to raise California’s tobacco tax

The L.A. Times reports:

A coalition of health groups has launched a new campaign to ask voters in November to increase California's tax on cigarettes by $2 per pack, this time enlisting deep-pocket supporters to counter a tobacco industry that blocked several attempts in the past.

Billionaire Tom Steyer, who was the nation’s largest individual political donor in 2014, spending $74 million that year, is leading the campaign for the tobacco tax. He has funneled $1 million into collecting signatures to qualify the measure for the Nov. 8 ballot.

“This is a historic opportunity to make an advance in public health,” Steyer said Monday, standing with some 20 supporters in front of the San Diego County Registrar of Voters Office. “[Tobacco use] is the number one cause of preventable death in California and we can save thousands of lives and billions of dollars by doing this.”

The hedge-fund manager and environmental activist is seen as a possible candidate for governor in 2018, and the tobacco tax measure should raise his profile with state voters.

The coalition, which also includes the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Assn., the American Lung Assn. and the Service Employees International Union, began Monday to turn in one million signatures it says it has collected to raise the tax on all tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes.

The Democrat party war on the working class.