Hawaii Legislature Wants to Tax Electronic Cigarettes… Hard

An article at www.policymic.com shows how legislators may be doing more harm than good:

Last week, Hawaii’s state legislature introduced two bills that would ban the sale of e-cigarettes to minors and tax the devices at 70% of their wholesale price, the same rate as tobacco products.

Calling this a misguided effort is as usual an understatement in all of these news articles regarding electronic cigarettes these days.  Hiding this under the umbrella of “Protecting the youth” is typical of politics.  Most smokers of electronic cigarettes do not want these in the hands of the youth of the world.  By waving these fearful ideas at the public, they feel safe from any repercussions from the public if they covertly apply outrageous laws and policies on something.

Now taking into account that they mean the best, hear is my favorite part of this article, and oh is it so true, that is a quote from Michael Siegel:

Boston University public health professor Michael Siegel also highlighted the problem with the legislation’s justification, explaining that “the anti-smoking ideologues would advise victims of a shipwreck not to use the lifeboats because they haven’t been fully tested to ensure their safety. And if thousands of victims of that shipwreck were successfully keeping afloat because of the lifeboats, the anti-smoking ideologues would advise them to abandon the lifeboats and stick to ‘government approved’ survival methods.”

And how about this bit of juicy info:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also concluded two years ago that e-cigs contain far fewer carcinogens than traditional cigarettes.

Hawaii’s proposal to classify and tax e-cigs as tobacco products will also create some dangerous unintended consequences. Much research suggests that taxing tobacco raises its price and discourages its consumption. In this case, however, the state would be discouraging consumption of one of tobacco’s safer competitors. This is very troubling because lower prices relative to cigarettes provide an incentive for smokers to switch to e-cigs. Worse, the impact won’t be restricted to the islands. One of the major suppliers of e-cigs, a company called Volcano, is based in Hawaii. As a result of the tax, retailers around the country supplied by Volcano would be forced to raise their prices — or stop selling e-cigs altogether. The result, then, would be even fewer smokers giving up traditional cigarettes.

Now, keeping these out of the hands of children, I’m all for, as are all smokers I’m sure.  But purposely keeping smokers from them, keeping smokers on, wait how did the author put it:

Given that smoking kills over 400,000 people annually, as proponents of the Hawaii legislation admit, their fear that e-cigs could be harmful is entirely misplaced. Tobacco is clearly the real killer here. The bills’ proponents are doubly wrong on this point because they attempt to associate the risks of tobacco use with e-cigs, which do not contain tobacco. They also claim that e-cigs could serve as a “gateway” to the use of other more dangerous tobacco products, even though the overwhelming effect of e-cigs has been to reduce tobacco use.

Well said, Cameron Science.  Well said indeed.  Then why are they against it?  I truly hope they are just really misguided politicians and not greedy, in-the-pocket-of-big-tobacco law makers that we trust to do whats best for us.  Here is my hope:  Please let them be ignorant and misguided, that hopefully can learn and grow and get back on the right course and not uncaring money hungry, I’ll-let-people-rot-just-so-they-can-make-a-quick-buck types.