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Coloradans have always been pioneers. With an innovative spirit, we’ve had the courage to overcome adversity, seize opportunity, and turn bold visions into reality. Today, with ColoradoCare, we’re on the frontier of a health care revolution. (Irene Aguilar, 9/30)

Marijuana is a complicated issue. I support its medicinal use and have introduced federal legislation to make it easier to research and potentially bring marijuana-derived medicines to the market with FDA approval... But Proposition 64 would allow marijuana of any strength to be sold. (Dianne Feinstein, 10/1)

Everyone knows that tobacco kills, but still, the numbers are staggering. In California alone, some 40,000 adults die each year as a result of smoking or secondhand smoke, and the amount spent annually on healthcare directly related to tobacco exceeds $13 billion. Nationally, the death toll is 480,000. Americans, for better or worse, have decided that this nasty, lethal drug should remain legal. So government’s approach is to discourage smoking where it can. It restricts advertising, requires warnings on cigarette packs, bars sales to minors — and, most effectively, it levies “sin taxes” designed to make smoking prohibitively expensive. (9/30)

There is ample evidence from around the country that has proven regular and significant increases in tobacco taxes, like the $1.50 increase per cigarette pack supported by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and other public health groups, are necessary to ensure the state will benefit fully from a public-health standpoint. Tobacco tax increases of less than $1 per pack have far less impact on teen- and adult-smoking rates because the tobacco industry can easily offset the smaller cost increases through temporary price cuts, coupons and other promotional discounting. (Pam Pilgrim, 9/30)