Smoking Out the Truth on Tobacco Tax Money

As a nonprofit agency providing early intervention/special-needs programs, child-care services and training for home-based child-care providers for nearly 25 years, we at Child and Family Services applaud the Proposition 10 Commission on its quest for universal child care (“Tobacco Tax Might Fund Preschools,” Aug. 8). The lack of affordable, quality child care in this city is among the greatest barriers to self-sufficiency faced by low-income families and welfare-to-work participants. The challenge becomes even greater when it involves a child with a learning, physical or emotional disability.

While we do understand the reservations of Rutgers University professor Steven Barnett, we believe that with careful thought and appropriate planning a program can be created here in Los Angeles that can serve as a model for other cities. By taking steady baby steps, the local Proposition 10 Commission can help provide an invaluable service to the families of L.A. County through the creation of a system allowing parents to select from a full array of quality child-care choices.

Duane Dennis

Executive Director

Child and Family Services

Los Angeles

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Your article on proposed tobacco tax usage to fund preschools illustrates perfectly the abject cynicism underlying the exploitive Proposition 10 tobacco tax and, by extension, what has driven the whole hypocritical campaign to purportedly stamp out tobacco use to improve society, save smokers from themselves and eliminate “life-threatening” secondhand smoke.

If there were any sincerity or honesty in the anti-tobacco war, the taxes derived therefrom would be directed toward stopping smoking, rehabilitating ex-smokers and tending to the infirmities they and secondhand smoke inhalers are claimed to suffer. What we have instead is greedy infighting between bureaucrats, politicians and Rob Reiner-style do-gooders over the spoils and how to employ them. These tax-hungry hyenas and their ilk want smoking stopped about as much as Colombian mobsters want cocaine legalized.

Jackson L. Forney

Nipomo, Calif.

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If Reiner is so concerned about the fate of impoverished preschoolers, then why doesn’t he start up his own charity for them? Or perhaps he can self-fund a campaign to encourage couples not to have kids they can’t afford. I implore all California smokers to buy their cigarettes tax-free over the Internet. It’s time to put limousine liberals like Reiner where they belong--in the peanut gallery of political influence.

Steve Reynolds

Los Angeles

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I truly commend Reiner for his visionary quest to expand our preschool programs. I believe he genuinely understands that a proper early education is like a solid foundation on a house. I have been teaching pre-kindergarten for the last 13 years. I realize that $1 spent today on these children might save the taxpaying public $10 in the future.

Laura Kornblum

Whittier