Taxes, as we all know, are one of the few sure things in life. Most Americans probably expect to see their hard-earned, taxed money at work. This November, however, will see Proposition 86 on the ballot, a proposal to tax cigarette smokers for services they’ll most likely never use.

The California Department of Health Services claims that the money from Prop. 86, which would place an excise tax of $2.60 on each pack of cigarettes, will go to helping 500,000 adult smokers quit. It will prevent 700,000 kids from becoming adult smokers and will help avert 300,000 tobacco-related deaths. The problem is, not much of the money is actually slated to go toward those goals. This proposition is shamelessly misleading and isn’t concerned about the health of California smokers.

Roughly 14 percent of the $2.1 billion this tax will generate will be set aside for tobacco-related programs. The rest of the money will go to services or businesses that have nothing to do with smoking or tobacco, such as hospital corporations and HMOs. Kaiser Permanente and Sutter Health are just two of many health care conglomerates that stand to gain some cash from this proposition, and evidently they have faith in its success: the California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems – a group of hospitals and health care organizations of which Kaiser and Sutter Health are members – has contributed almost $9 million to the campaign.

A report released by the department uses flawed logic to determine the miraculous number of would-be smokers this tax will eradicate. Apparently, multiplying the percentage change in cigarette price by the price elasticity (meaning the fluctuation of prices from different merchants and brands) will yield the percentage change in demand for tobacco products. Unfortunately, this simple math formula is leaving out one very obvious factor: addiction.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse maintains that only 6 percent of smokers are able to successfully quit for more than a month. Nicotine is one of the hardest addictions to kick, and smokers will spend millions of dollars a year on programs to help them quit, including gum, the patch, and hypnosis. Another $2.60 per pack is probably not going to stop those cravings.

Cocaine and heroine are both pretty expensive, not to mention illegal, drugs. Yet neither legality, nor price, has ever stopped the drug cartels from raking in business. Call me cynical, but I’m just not convinced those health care associations have altruistic motivations. I suspect that, as usual in politics, this proposition’s supporters are in it for the money.

While the state of health care in this country could use a serious overhaul, this is not the answer. Hospitals will receive 40 percent of the funds generated by the tax, much-needed funds, to be sure, but completely unrelated to tobacco use. Furthermore, hospitals receiving money under Prop. 86 would be exempt from antitrust laws, meaning they could share the cost of on-call ER physicians.

Antitrust laws are designed to encourage competition and prevent price fixing. I don’t think we really want our already over-priced health services to be exempt from laws preventing them from charging more.

Furthermore, Prop 86 would impose this tax only in California. Smokers who are addicted to nicotine can easily tap the internet for their tobacco needs, or worse, the black market.

I’m not a smoker. I couldn’t care less what smokers have to pay for a pack, but this proposition is totally misguided. It attempts to pull the wool over voters’ eyes by pretending it is about smokers’ health. The logic behind it is erroneous and it should be rejected on its invalid motives alone.