Prop. 99 Funds

I welcome the good news that Proposition 99 has already saved thousands of Californians from dying of lung cancer. Why was the news tucked away into an editorial (“The Proposition for Better Health,” Jan. 14) when it really deserves a banner deadline. The ballot box has led to more progress in the fight against disease than our state has seen in decades of battling cancer and heart attacks with scalpels and syringes.

AB 75, which allocates a small portion of Proposition 99 funds to a health education account, will save even more lives by educating our children and communities about tobacco. If these expenditures are only 5% effective at helping California’s 8 million smokers quit and helping our 4 million teen-agers not start, we could generate 600,000 healthier people--each living an average of 8 years longer than if they smoked.

Already groups are lining up to redirect Proposition 99 money away from preventing disease by using the health education account to provide health insurance for 100,000 medically indigent Californians. That’s the same as hiring ambulances at the bottom of a cliff instead of building a fence at the top. I hope we have more sense than that.

DAVID BISHAI, M.D., M.P.H.

Los Angeles