In the movie “Thank You For Smoking,” the lead character falls victim to the moral outrage against special interest groups. His crime: serving as a spokesman for the evil tobacco industry. His punishment: suffering a nicotine-patch overdose in the arms of Honest Abe.

Proposition 89 is taking a similar stand to the smoke-free “enthusiasts” in the movie. The targets of the proposition are special interest groups — namely corporations, political committees and individuals willing to shell out an extraordinary amount of money to political campaigns and ballot initiatives.

The proposition is meant to level the playing ground for all political candidates. Candidates will have the option of receiving money from the state to finance their campaign. Now all candidates, after collecting a little seed money and a certain number of five-dollar collections from voters, will be able to escape the strong hold that big business supposedly has around every candidate in California.

However, there are three major issues with Prop 89.

The first issue is that businesses and financial institutions will experience a tax increase in order to fund the campaign finance reform. And when taxes go up, business passes the burden onto the consumer.

In addition, the hundreds of millions of dollars collected from the tax increase will go into a Clean Money Fund (as compared to the dirty, tobacco-laced dollars that candidates currently use). Businesses and consumers will have no say over where their tax dollars go. So what if the oil company ends up funding the Green Party candidate’s bid for senate?

The second major issue deals with personal contributions. The proposition would place significant limitations on how much an individual may contribute to a candidate or even a political party’s election cycle funds.

Any time a law limits personal freedom, we should step back and re-evaluate why we are implementing censorship on ourselves. Do we really want to hinder our right to spend our own money?

The final misgiving lies with the exemption clause for non-profit organizations. Non-profit organizations will be able to donate to ballot measures and propositions as they see fit, as long as they tell donators that some of the money may go to political causes.

In other words, as long as the smoke-free “enthusiasts” don’t try to turn a profit, they can try to buy a proposition. Small business is restricted, but they are only in it for the money anyways.

Unless we are willing to increase our own taxes in order to spend millions for a candidate’s mudslinging television ads, we will have to find an alternative to Prop 89.

Megan Reiss, a senior majoring in human biology, is president of Stanford College Republicans. She can be reached at mreiss@stanford.edu.