Indeed, if the California government (and populace) actually applied logic to their voting, this would very much make sense. This is especially true if you raise cigarette taxes yet keep vapor products tax-free.
However, this logic hasn't worked with the FDA or liberals at the Federal level, and certainly won't work in California, because....
Tobacco taxes were originally sold to the population as a way to dissuade smoking by making it more expensive to smoke. The truth is, state governments rely on these tobacco taxes in their state budgets.
vaping has put a huge damper on that, hence, we need to increase cigarette taxes (less people are smoking or
vaping) and add a
vaping tax (to capture those, like me, who switched from smoking to vaping) in order to keep that revenue flowing in.