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Exactly right. Just as the tobacco lobbyists wanted.

The tobacco lobbyists wanted the tobacco companies to pay out millions? I'm confused by your statement. Can you please explain?

I wouldn't mind paying more taxes if it deprived the government of a conflict of interest in this important public health problem.

Again, I'm a bit confused. (Maybe I need a nap.) Are you agreeing with me that you'd rather have government stay out of it? If so, why would that result in more taxes?

The tobacco companies didn't want to pay out all that money, of course. What they wanted, however, was for the state legislatures to not spend the money on smoking cessation and prevention programs. They had some success at that. California ran an anti-smoking TV ad campaign that was very successful (teen smoking rates dropped a lot in California) until the legislature pulled the fiscal plug. Anti-smoking activists blame the tobacco lobbyists for that.

I don't want the government collecting taxes from cigarettes if that means that the government has a good reason to keep cigarettes sales up. If we didn't collect taxes from cigarettes, we would have to make up the revenue from something else. Sales taxes or income taxes say. So our taxes would go up if cigarette taxes went away. A purely hypothetical situation of course, no one will reduce taxes on cigarettes.