In just over a week, the driver, who declined to make his name public but says he lives paycheck to paycheck, may have a tough choice to make when it comes to his habit.

The California Tobacco Tax of 2006, Proposition 86 on November’s ballot, would tax cigarettes a total of $3.47 a pack, making California’s the highest cigarette tax in the country. The state currently taxes cigarettes 87 cents a pack, as mandated by 1998’s Proposition 10. If Prop 86 passes, the additional tax on a single pack would be $2.60 per pack for all brands of cigarettes.

The Berkeley cab driver, a Somali immigrant who has been driving a cab for just over three years, said he usually pays about $5.40 for a pack of American Spirits, his cigarette of choice. If Prop 86 passes, the driver will pay about $8 for a pack.

“I’ve been trying to quit for a long time,” he said. “I knew that there might be an increase in price, but I didn’t know how much. I’ll probably stop smoking if it passes.”

That’s one thing the backers of Prop. 86, including the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the California Hospital Association, say they would like.

“California hospitals are struggling every day – emergency rooms are having a major crisis,” said Jan Emerson, a spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association. “Twenty-five percent of emergency room visits are linked to cigarette usage-- $3 billion in uncompensated care that starts in the ER. As you may know, seventy ERs have closed in the last ten years across California.”

The California Budget Project, a nonpartisan organization that conducts independent fiscal and policy analysis, said that if Prop 86 passes, 36 percent, or $756 million of the total $2.1 billion in estimated 2007 revenues, would go directly to emergency rooms.

For some smokers queried about the proposition last week, these facts either did not matter or were overlooked.

Another taxi driver, a heavy smoker who also asked to remain anonymous for fear he would lose clients if they knew he smoked, said the tax is unfair. “They’re singling out a particular group of people. It’s discrimination,” he said. “Just because I’m a smoker, I shouldn’t have to pay for anyone else’s health costs.”

According to data from the University of California’s Institute of Governmental Studies, the tobacco company Philip Morris USA has spent $43,795,000 to oppose the tax. Aside from a few major tobacco companies, “No on 86” is led by the California Taxpayers Association, numerous county sheriffs associations, and many small business and retail associations.

Many in law enforcement who back “No on 86” argue that the tax increase would cause a surge in the black market for cigarettes. They argue that smokers would move to buying cigarettes on the Internet and at Indian reservations, or to illegal domestic smuggling, in which a criminal might buy cigarettes in bulk from a low-tax state like Virginia, and then sell them in California for a profit.

“I don’t advocate smoking, but it just gives a lot more value to a ‘non-trackable item’,” said Jim Duffy, president of the San Diego Deputy Sheriffs’ Association. “It’s not illegal to possess, so there is no way for us to deal with it, and there are a lot of people out there who are going to use the money from cigarettes sold illegally to get drug money for the most part.”

Lost tax revenue from Internet cigarette sales became a problem for states like New Jersey, for example, where the tax was raised to among the highest in the country. But New Jersey and other high-tax states, like New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, have fought back in recent years by using the Jenkins Act of 1949, which states that any cigarette company shipping nationally must provide to the state treasurer “the name and address of the person to whom the shipment was made, the brand, and the quantity thereof.”

Using Jenkins, they have begun collecting back taxes on cigarettes purchased online without being taxed. In 2005, after an agreement was made between the federal government and some of the largest Internet cigarette retailers, names and receipts of buyers were released for tax purposes to many states, including California. And since 2005, a team of Attorneys General, including California’s Attorney General Bill Lockyer, has been working with credit card companies, all of which have policies to prohibit illegal transactions.

“No on 86” has cited the California Board of Equalization, which administers state revenue programs. The California BOE concluded that up to 27 percent of the market – up from 2-6 percent – was smuggled after another tobacco tax, Prop 10, was passed in 1998. They also said smuggling would continue to rise if increased taxes were imposed by Prop 86.

But the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, found in its own study—which Center researchers say is confirmed by other available studies—that the smuggling rate actually stayed level after Prop 10.

“The BOE estimates should not be used as a basis for making public policy,” said the UCSF study, called “Cigarette Smuggling in California: Fact and Fiction.” The BOE study “implicitly assumes that any drop in cigarette tax-paid sales in California beyond the drop expected from price increases was a result of increased smuggling rather than smokers cutting down or quitting as a result of the California Tobacco Control Program,” the UCSF study said.

Another concern cited by “No on 86” is the possibility that small retailers who sell cigarettes could lose revenue. According to a study funded in part by Phillip Morris USA, convenience stores could lose as much a third of all in-store sales.

“I would rather lose a handful of retailers than lose children,” said Maria Robles, a nurse and a spokeswoman for “Yes on 86.”. “Businesses are always having to shift, and at the end of the day, Proposition 86 is about saving lives and health.”

The California Department of Health Services said that of the 14 percent of Californians who now smoke, 13.2 percent of those would quit because of this tax, dropping the state’s smoking population to 12.2 percent.

Ross Porter, a State Tobacco Control official and a member of the American Lung Association. said recently on a radio station that if the tax passes, 700,000 teens will decide not to smoke. The California Department of Health Services verified these numbers, and added that “approximately 120,000 high school students and 30,000 middle school students would either quit smoking or not start smoking because of the tax increase.” Porter said these numbers are important, because teen smoking has increased over the past two years by 16 percent.

Outside the Starbucks on Oxford Street, across from UC Berkeley’s main entrance, a few high school kids on skateboards smoked as they rode.

“I would definitely stop smoking if a pack of cigarettes went up to $8,” said a Berkeley High 11th grader named Jacob. “But a lot of my friends smoke and I don’t think they’ll stop if the price goes up. They’ll just have less money. Really – I would feel worse for those people who can’t stop and have to keep on buying, even if they can’t afford it.”

The disproportionate effect taxing cigarettes has on the poor is something researchers have documented. The California Budget Project states that the increased tobacco tax would have a disproportionate impact on low-income Californians, since low-income individuals tend to spend a greater share of their incomes on tobacco products.

In 2002, the CPB also said that of smokers in California, 13.2 percent earned more than $75,000 annually, while almost twice the number of smokers had incomes between $10,000 and $20,000. They concluded that people who are least able to afford smoking tend to smoke more often, and because they earn less money, a higher percentage of their salaries’ goes toward smoking.

But that only reinforces the idea, proponents of Prop 86 argue, that more expensive cigarettes would cut down and smoking and thereby improve people’s health. “I’ve been smoking American Spirits because they say it’s more natural, and I’ve been trying to quit,” the Somali driver on Berkeley’s Center Street said. “This should be a good incentive.”