It’s not clear from the article whether this is a one time decrease from the noticeable tax increase, whether people adjusted to the higher price or it continues reducing smoking, or how much is credit to increased spending on smoking cessation

Most important, it’s not clear whether that info helps anyone else. As a resident of a small state, I imagine we’d just have people jump the border and buy elsewhere. Most parts of California are a much longer drive to a different state with lower vice taxes.

Maybe it’s just an argument for a significant increase in federal taxes, but I can’t imagine that actually happening in the era of corporate ownership of politicians and blatant class warfare. Actually it’s a dream come true for Republican outrage politics, where they can play on emotions, populist bombast and “muh freedumb” without actually doing anything useful