‘Raising the price of the healthier stuff’: Curley criticizes WA’s 95% vape, zyn tax
Jan 7, 2026, 12:13 PM
As the 2026 year kicked off, so did a 95% tax on nicotine products, which nearly doubled the prices of certain e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches.
John Curley, host of “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio, questioned Washington’s decision to implement a tax on the “healthier alternative” to cigarettes, and noted instances of nicotine users already traveling to neighboring states to take advantage of pre-tax prices.
“The state is like, oh, we have this many smokers, this many people doing vape and Zyns. We’ll capture all of this money, but they don’t realize there’ll be leakage to other places like Idaho and Oregon,” Curley said. “It’s weird, right? You have a healthier alternative to cigarettes, but we’re not going to raise the price of cigarettes. We’re going to raise the price of the healthier stuff.”
“For vapes, I think anybody can agree that they’re at least marginally healthier,” KIRO producer Joe Wallace responded. “As far as we know, maybe in 20 years we will find out something different. But Zyns are, without a doubt, infinitely healthier than smoking cigarettes.”
Watch the full discussion in the video above.
Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.
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