Do you feel the same way about caffeine?
I’m curious how this will affect sales in Ohio and West Virginia. The recent Fourth of July brought memories of Ohio Phantom Fireworks trips in years past.
Pennsylvania is a nutty [del]state[/del] commonwealth. When Pittsburgh bumped up their sales tax, I just stopped driving there for shopping. Pittsburgh used to be where I went to buy a car. No more. Greensburg made out. And then Allegheny county added a liquor tax, so I stay out of that county.
I would, if that ever happened. People don’t go around dropping caffeine pills into people’s drinks.
Great. Guys too drunk to talk who can’t shut up and pass out. Peachy.
Vaping has increased smoking among the young, it is not helping. Good for governor wolf. Your friend should find a less evil business to work in.
De nial is not just a river in Egypt.
Damndest thing happened to me. Bought some vape because people I know and trust had some success with it. Rather than light a ciggy when the monkey screams, couple pulls on the vape shut him up, with middle to high nic content.
Then I read an article by some scientist who claimed that nicotine wasn’t actually addictive and other elements in ciggy smoke were responsible, and bam! didn’t work any more. Sumbitch! Don’t even know if he she was full of beans, never found out.
I have to agree with the OP here: this is an ill-advised tax.
First, even if we leave aside any questions of equity and fairness and health, the tax itself is such a tiny part of PA’s overall budget-balancing exercise that it’s effectively useless, especially if people respond to it by shopping online or out of state.
The total amount needed to balance the PA budget was $1.3 billion. The tax on e-cigs and vapor products will, according to the estimates provided by the government itself, bring in a total of $13 million. That’s 1 whole percent of the deficit. Big fucking deal.
But that’s the least important issue.
Second is the fact that it is simply bad fiscal policy to fund important, ongoing budgetary needs from unstable revenue sources like sin taxes. One of the aims of taxing unhealthy activities is to reduce those activities, which flies in direct opposition to your need to raise money. This is further complicated when many consumers can easily avoid the tax, as in this case.
Thirdly, despite some of the conflicting evidence about the extent to which e-cigs and vaping help people quit smoking, it is generally not disputed that, if a person is disinclined to quit a nicotine habit, then that person is better off vaping or using e-cigs than they are smoking. I would never claim that these products are healthy, but if they are healthier than the most likely alternative (which they are), and if people tend to use them as a replacement for the most likely alternative (which they do), then massive prices rises might not be good health policy or good fiscal policy.
Fourthly, the mechanism of taxing the newer nicotine delivery systems was not well thought-out. Because the tax is ad valorem (based on the wholesale price of the product), the tax falls not only on the actual stuff that you’re ingesting, but also on the equipment used to produce the vapor. This means that, on a per-dose basis, the tax will disproportionately impact those who use disposable products rather than those who use reusable products.
That is, if you have the money to invest in (or already own) a personal vaporizer device, you will end up paying a lower effective tax rate than someone who buys disposable e-cigarettes, because in those disposable e-cigs, you are being taxed both on the vapor liquid and on the delivery system. Those who buy the disposable products are more likely to be low-income people who can’t or won’t pay the up-front cost for a vaporizer, making this tax even more regressive than it already was.
If you’re going to tax these products, the tax should not be ad valorem; it should be based on the amount of vapor liquid.
Except that e-cigs are not the only alternative to smoking. There are smoking cessation meds/devices that help people quit for good, rather than encouraging a lifetime nicotine habit (in smokers as well as those who never smoked) with unknown potential long-term consequences (including effects on people exposed to secondhand vapors).
There is an unrealistic expectation by many e-cig users that they have made a noble effort to quit smoking and therefore society should accomodate them and leave their new habit alone - no regulation permitted.
As for the tax aspect - governments have a habit of taxing products deleterious to health under the guise of discouraging them and/or raising money to deal with their consequences. But in the end, these tax revenues typically wind up in the general treasury (as with tobacco settlement money). If PA wants to do the right thing, the overwhelming share of this revenue should go towards smoking/nicotine addiction cessation, education and research. But it probably won’t.
To correct something I posted earlier - e-cig users won’t need to import products directly from China to be exposed to potential contaminants and adulterants. A lot of what already is in e-cigs through regular channels comes from China. I wouldn’t feel real confident about health benefits of these products knowing that Chinese manufacturers have a major input in their production.
A big, smoking straw man.
I never once suggested, and nor has anyone in this thread, that there should be no regulation of electronic smoking devices. I believe that their sale should be restricted by age, just like regular cigarettes. I believe that their use should be restricted in terms of locations (restaurants, bars, etc.), just like regular cigarettes. I believe that it is reasonable to tax them in order to fund health campaigns that discourage and help to reduce or prevent nicotine addiction, just like regular cigarettes.
All i am arguing is that a 40% ad valorem tax is not a good solution, either in terms of the amount or the way that it is administered, especially when it will be trivially easy for many people to avoid it, and it contributes such an insignificant percentage of the budget hole that the PA legislature is trying to fill. I also happen to believe, as a left-liberal, that when we’re trying to fill large budget holes, we should do our best to find sources of income that don’t have a dramatically disproportionate impact on low-income people.
I don’t know enough to comment one way or another on this issue but there do seem to be some inconsistencies in argument in the OP.
On the one hand you say that nobody will buy them in stores because everyone will get them elsewhere. Followed by saying that people will die because they can’t get them.
Also how does this tax compare to the tax on cigarettes? If the current tax structure is such that it costs more to vape than buy cigarettes then I can see that this is poor public health, decision, but otherwise I don’t see what makes the situation with e-cigarettes economically different from a tax on regular tobacco. Given that you say this will lead people to go back to cigarettes, it is clear that cigarettes are readily available in PA, people are willing to pay the tax to get them, and shops that sell them haven’t all disappeared.
What is the health concern of the Nicotine additiction? It is said above with moralizing tones that the vaping is enabling the nicotine addition. And so?
I agree that the comparison with cigarettes is relevant to this discussion. The tax on regular cigarettes went up $1.00 per pack, from $1.60 to $2.60 per pack. This is something that the OP left out of his complaint, and it has to be considered.
It’s not quite clear to me how the balance of taxation between the two products is likely to affect consumption. I’m also not sure about the comparative logistics of avoiding the tax by buying out of state or online. Is it easier to order vaping stuff online than cigarettes, or not?
Vape shops exist for their own sake, unlike convenience stores. Sheetz will not be going out of business because the price of cigarettes went up, they sell a myriad of other products.
As for people obtaining vape products, the problem lies in the details. I have enough knowledge about the available products that I can make an informed decision about what I buy. The person who wishes to stop smoking and replace it with an e-cigarette does not have that knowledge. The shops can assist them in making an informed decision. Those that decide poorly, get equipment that they don’t understand the function of, order juice that tastes vile, will go back to cigarettes with little hesitation and never consider the alternative again.
The thing I can’t wrap my head around is that vaping is about harm reduction. The moralists here assert that people should simply quit, as if that’s so easy. It is not. So, since they either cannot or will not quit, should we simply condemn them to a grotesque and painful death by cancer, or should they be able to reduce the harm they do to themselves? We should be encouraging that, not kicking them for their addiction.
When you are talking about addiction you are bringing up a whole clusterf*ck of conflicting behaviour and emotions. Some people will buy vaping products from places other than shops, some will go back to smoking cigarettes.
The moralists see smoking as a character defect, and the inability to quit as evidence of moral weakness. Both are worthy of punishment. It’s what moralists do, and cancer is seen as testimony to their righteousness.
Oversensitive much?
I did not say that was your viewpoint, and (in case you failed to notice) also expressed doubts about the purpose behind taxation.
The fact remains that various pro-e-cigarette advocates (and their allies on the libertarianoid spectrum) want government to keep its hands off. Example here. Gosh, how could public health advocates not fall all over themselves supporting e-cigs?
Speaking of oversized, fetid strawmen, I failed to notice anyone here suggesting that smokers “simply quit”. As I mentioned previously (a point mhendo decided not to address) there are numerous smoking cessation strategies with better evidentiary backing than e-cigarettes, and which are not predicated on continuing an indefinite addiction to nicotine.
Again: regulators and the general public are under no obligation to play footsie with the e-cig industry because these folks are noble sorts helping to spare smokers the agony of smoking-related diseases.*
*I’m sure “the shops can assist (smokers) in making an informed decision” about getting into e-cigs. After all, they have their potential customers’ best interests at heart. :dubious:
The reason i did not address it is that it is irrelevant to my argument.
That is, even if you can demonstrate with complete confidence that e-cigarettes do not cause a single person to actually stop smoking, every single one of my arguments against this tax remains exactly the same.
I don’t find this a particularly compelling argument.
Public policy should be dictated by a desire to help maintain a narrow, undiversified business model. If taxing e-cigs is good policy, then do it; if it isn’t good policy, then don’t do it. But if vape-shop owners are hurt by this policy, they need to look into diversifying their product line.
That should of course be:
Public policy should NOT be dictated…