The actor-director-producer’s legacy includes succeeding in passing a tax on tobacco products to bolster early childhood development in California.

By Mark Kreidler, Capital & Main

This story is produced by the award-winning journalism nonprofit Capital & Main and co-published here with permission.

One of Rob Reiner’s signature achievements lay outside Hollywood — but not far outside.

Leaning on film industry stars and executives for public support and fundraising, Reiner, the prolific actor, director and producer, led a high-profile 1998 campaign that created state funding for what we know now as First 5 California, the most significant early childhood health and education program in the state.

Over the next quarter century, tobacco taxes collected through Proposition 10 pumped more than $12 billion into programs to expand preschool access, develop childhood mental health care services, improve training and compensation for early educators, and increase access to dental care — all to benefit children during the crucial developmental years from birth through age 5.

In the process, the substantial added tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products — voted in by Californians despite a huge power play from the tobacco industry — played some role in discouraging their use in the Golden State, a nearly steady decline in the ensuing years.

Today, as overall tobacco consumption in California continues to decrease and the taxes collected on those sales diminish, state funding for First 5 is in a dramatic decline. But the legacy of the program and its achievements, which Reiner, who died tragically last weekend, often described as one of his life’s true passions, remains intact, with the state’s huge recent investment in universal prekindergarten a towering example.

In that sense, First 5 “has fulfilled the intention that it had 25 years ago,” Jackie Wong, executive director of First 5 California, the state association that coordinates with 58 individual county commissions, told Capital & Main. “I would say that it is a declining revenue stream — but look at the tremendous gains we’ve made.”

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Reiner’s interest in early childhood development dated back more than 20 years before the initiative that led to Prop. 10. As the Los Angeles Times recounted in 1998, Reiner’s divorce from actor/director Penny Marshall had led him into therapy, through which he delved into the ways his own childhood had shaped the person he became.

That process led Reiner to begin meeting with experts on brain science and early development. He said he was shocked to discover how little public funding was devoted to the first five years of a child’s life — the years before kids traditionally began school. Reiner produced a television special on the topic, “I Am Your Child,” and then dove into the idea of boosting state funding for those early years of life.

Reiner recruited A-list celebrities like Steven Spielberg, Michael J. Fox and Tom Hanks to support Prop. 10, along with his own father, comedy icon Carl Reiner. The initiative’s proposal of a 50-cent tax on every pack of cigarettes and smaller taxes on other tobacco products, meanwhile, earned him a deep-pocketed foe. But despite an estimated $28.5 million spent by the tobacco industry to oppose the measure (roughly $57 million in 2025 dollars), Prop. 10 narrowly passed in November 1998.

The measure created the California Children and Families Commission, which we now know as First 5 California. That state commission receives 20% of the tobacco-tax funds, with 80% going to local First 5 commissions in each of the state’s 58 counties.

Initially, Wong said, the state commission used a lot of its funding to help stand up many of the local county programs. Today, First 5 California’s share of the tax payout is focused more on statewide change, such as the long, expensive campaign and multiple demonstration programs that culminated in the state deciding to fund universal pre-K in 2021.

California’s current budget provides $7 billion for preschool programs. That is multiples beyond what First 5 could ever cover — but it was born out of a movement that First 5 helped fund and organize for years before it happened.

That is part of the legacy of Reiner, who sometimes mused about quitting Hollywood to work on these issues exclusively.

Sean Casey, who was a longtime director of the First 5 local program in Contra Costa County, noted that Reiner’s vision for transforming how kids develop in their earliest years of life has been realized across multiple categories.

“Training and professional development for providers has dramatically increased. Teaching standards have been clarified and strengthened,” Casey wrote this week at the education news site EdSource.

“More children than ever receive regular developmental screening and early intervention. Home visiting services and parent support centers have provided additional pathways to support parents in understanding their child’s developmental progress.”

Mark Friedman was the founding chief executive of First 5 Alameda County. Writing for the Times this week, Friedman pointed out that in those crucial early years after Prop. 10’s passage, Reiner remained involved on a personal and often granular level.

“Reiner never delegated the hard parts,” Friedman wrote. “He showed up, listened closely, asked tough questions and helped solve problems. He led with clarity and conviction, refusing to let bureaucratic inertia define the limits of what was possible. He knew that public policy, like storytelling, requires imagination, discipline and persistence.”

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Tobacco-tax funding for First 5 programs has steadily declined since the mid-2000s, according to state data. Peaking at more than $611 million in 2005, the state funds came in at $228 million for fiscal year 2023.

Reiner and the other people who put Prop. 10 together understood the probable decline in revenue as a likely consequence of rising taxes, which would dissuade people from tobacco use in general and cigarettes in particular. In 2016, California voters passed another proposition that again raised taxes on cigarettes and vaping products, but the bulk of that money was earmarked for Medi-Cal services.

Still, the dwindling state funding has prompted changes for individual First 5 county operations, including championing local initiatives like Alameda County’s Measure C to expand access to early childhood education. Sonoma County voters passed a similar measure last year.

Budget challenges for First 5, on both the state and county level, will only intensify in the years ahead. But the work that Reiner began decades ago will continue, and some of its highest aspirations are being realized already.

“You look at all the focus on early literacy efforts, or the developmental screenings that may not have been a focus before,” Wong said. “All of this was made possible, in our belief, by the vision of Rob Reiner — making sure that we understood holistically what the needs of young children and their families were.”

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