When SF State students light up in January, they may be paying an additional $0.13 per cigarette.

Cancer, emphysema, and social ostracization are just a few problems smokers face in California. But soon, they may have to face another issue: much lighter wallets.

Proposition 86 on the November ballot proposes a $2.60 tax per pack on cigarettes, which currently go for about $4 per pack, causing a divide among students – smokers and nonsmokers alike.

"It’s like New York, where you have to pay $7 there," geography major Justin Hollenbach, 24, said. “That's a lot of money, and I'm broke."

According to the official summary of the proposition provided by the attorney general, the additional revenue created by this initiative would go toward funding health services, nurse education, children's health insurance and tobacco-use prevention programs. Because of these benefits, kinesiology major Rosy Kreissman, who doesn't smoke, said she will most likely vote for the proposition.

"I know it sucks for the smokers, but it's going to be better for us nonsmokers," Kreissman, 25, said. "It would probably help keep younger kids from smoking too. You know, because $10 when you're a teenager, that's a good amount of money."

But there have been some questions over where, exactly, that tax revenue will go.

"I'm a smoker, so I don't like it. That's such a huge tax. But I don't know whether – putting my own bias aside – whether it's a good idea or not," said political science professor, Robert Smith. "Because there's this controversy about where the money's going to go. And I'm not sure what's the truth of that."

Smith said he also doesn't like how the money goes to a specific cause, saying he would be much happier if the money were put into a broadly encompassing fund.

"I don't like raising taxes for narrow purposes. I like raising taxes for general purposes," he said.

Smith pointed out that imposing the cigarette tax would mainly hit low-income smokers. And the short-term result of such a tax might actually be a hindrance to the state's economy.

"It's likely to lead to bootleg cigarettes, underground cigarettes," he said. "So in the short run, the state may actually lose revenue. People would start buying their cigarettes in bulk from Virginia or Indian reservations, and then they're not paying any California tax at all."

Nathan Baskett, 25, a geography major who said he hasn't touched a cigarette in 10 years, feels the proposition is unfair to smokers.

"I'm a nonsmoker, but this proposition really infuriates me. It’s like, on this campus, smokers get pushed far back into the parking lots," he said. "I'm shocked smokers aren't forced to be across 19th Avenue by now."

But for liberal studies major Annette Guiterrez, 41, the issue has more than one side. She said that on one hand, she can see where the tax can benefit health-wise, but on the other, smokers’ rights are being infringed upon by making cigarettes too expensive to maintain the habit.

"Smoking … is a choice. A personal choice,” Guiterrez, a nonsmoker, said. “It may not be the healthiest choice, but (smokers) do have the right to make that choice. But then, they don't have the right to impose and infringe those ill health effects on somebody else."