A bill that would impose a new state tax on vapor cartridges for electronic cigarettes will be considered soon in an Iowa Senate Committee.
The bill was the subject of a Senate subcommittee hearing yesterday. Michael Triplett, the lobbyist for a group of vapor product retailers called Iowans for Alternatives to Smoking and Tobacco, was among the first to testify.
“We’re opposed to this bill because we don’t believe that there’s justification for treating a device that’s less harmful than smoking in a similar fashion to deadly cigarettes,” Triplett said, who told lawmakers it’s the smoke, not the nicotine, that makes cigarettes deadly.
Threase Harms, a lobbyist for a coalition called Clear Air for Everyone, said cigarettes and e-cigarettes are “kindred cousins” and vaping liquid has been linked to a condition called “popcorn lung” and it contains chemicals like formaldehyde.
“Iowans are paying an estimated $1 billion annually for tobacco related health care costs,” Harms said, “and it’s time for vaping products to be paying their fair share because they certainly are going to be costing us a fair share.”
Other groups like the American Cancer Society applaud raising taxes on vaping products, but recommend some of the money raised go toward programs that discourage kids from vaping or smoking cigarettes. Amy Campbell, a lobbyist for the Iowa Behavioral Health Association, said school based programs are essential.
“The use is just exploding among youth and you can look at the trend lines…It’s pretty startling,” Campbell said. “We have kids who have never tried a cigarette, but are addicted to these products.”
Senator Mike Klemish, a Republican from Spillville, is the bill’s author.”I’m a former smoker. I still smoke once in a while myself. I’m being honest with this room. I don’t vape. I smoke cigarettes,” Klemish said. “…Nicotine is the addictive component of cigarettes that I’ve tried to wean myself off of, successfully and unsuccessfully, for the last 20 years.”
Klemish said he sees a lot of kids smoking and he worries the nicotine in the vaping liquid is the gateway to them moving on and smoking cigarettes. His bill also imposes a new tax on nicotine pouches, which are wedged inside a person’s bottom lip like smokeless tobacco.
The state sales tax is charged on vaping products and nicotine patches, but a far higher state tax is assessed on tobacco products.