Does Gov. Jay Inslee want to keep people smoking cigarettes?

Taken from Tuesday’s edition of The David Boze Show on 770 KTTH.

During every legislative session in nearly every state at nearly every level of government, there is always a desire to increase taxes on smokers.

Let me make something clear, I don’t like smoking, I never have. I don’t like the smell of it. My mother smoked. My grandfather died, in part, from emphysema. I’m not a fan of cigarettes.

That said, I do respect the ability and the rights of people to take the risks that they wish. If somebody wants to smoke, I’m not going to stop them. I’m not eager to say no you can never smoke either directly, or indirectly, for example, by taxing them to the point of insanity.

But let’s set cigarettes to the side and acknowledge that it would be a great thing if everybody stopped smoking.
I’ve met plenty of smokers that have decided at some point smoking is not cool and they want to stop it. But when they go to quit, they find out they are addicted. It’s very hard to get off the nicotine habit.

But there’s an option now that hasn’t been available before. That option is vaping. It’s this nicotine delivery system through vapor instead of smoke. It’s not an actual tobacco product. It doesn’t have the same carcinogens as cigarettes do.

But now, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee wants to tax vaping to the point it would be the same as cigarettes.

According to The Olympian:

“Inslee has proposed a 95 percent excise tax on e-cigarettes and vaping products — the same tax rate now applied to conventional cigarettes.”

It’s just the kind of thing where I look at this and I think, at what point are we going to say to ourselves we’ve taxed these guys enough?

One of the things the governor points to is that more and more kids are using the vaping cigarettes. He says he’s seeking the vaping tax as a way to deter teenagers and adolescents from using the products.

But among those students that are stepping forward and choosing to do something along those lines, if they don’t choose smoking but instead do the vaping and they otherwise would have been doing the smoking, that’s a win. You don’t want to make the two equal.

If you make the two equal, then you’re causing young people to move in the direction that you don’t want them to go to. Yes, nicotine is addictive, and we don’t know everything about vaping yet, but one thing we do know is that in all likelihood vaping is much better for you than smoking. That doesn’t mean it’s healthy. But one of our goals of public health is to get people to make less destructive choices.

We should acknowledge people are going to choose a product. And if they’re now choosing a vaping product instead of cigarettes, we should be able to say well that is a positive thing. Instead we panic about the potential health hazards of the new health choice.

It’s allowed people I know to quit smoking. I’ve been thinking about getting my mom one of these vaping cigarettes because she has struggled with smoking for years.

But if you make the vaping product so that it’s exactly the same cost as cigarettes, why would people switch? If you don’t have that lack of expense and it’s just as expensive, people aren’t going to feel that same urgency to switch to the new product.

Instead of celebrating a public health triumph, we have the effort to tax the new option into the same category as cigarettes. That really doesn’t make any sense at all if you want people to make choices for themselves that will make them live longer, healthier and hopefully happier lives.

Taken from Tuesday’s edition of The David Boze Show on 770 KTTH.

JS