The tax proposal is a result of the need to source revenue to pay for President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, introducing a massive hike in prices for eliquid – resulting in a tax dramatically higher than that imposed on packets of cigarettes.
The American Vapor Manufacturers said: “Incredible. While Congress proposes a gargantuan tax on vaping, the government - not the industry - is funding research at the National Institutes of Health showing what a horrible idea that would be. One of those NIH-backed researchers is Georgia State University Professor. He just sent Congress a bombshell letter discussing his findings. Turns out taxing vaping would cause a ‘significant public health harm.’ Go figure!
“Professor Pesko uses basic economic principles (and common sense) to explain what will happen if the cost of e-cigarettes increases. Prohibitionists who oppose e-cigarettes can’t wish away the facts. Their hostility to vaping will undo the progress we’ve made in reducing smoking and smoking-related deaths. And for what? Congress should abandon their regressive, counterproductive vaping tax and embrace real, science-based policies that will actually help people quit smoking and save lives.”
Professor Pesko has written to members of Congress in a letter described by Americans For Tax Reform as “explosive”.
He tells the politicians: “I have a $1.4 million dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct e-cigarette policy evaluation research, including evaluation of e-cigarette taxes. I do not receive funding from the tobacco industry, or related groups.”
Pesko continues: “My NIH-funded research spanning ten peer-reviewed published papers evaluating e-cigarette policies, and complementary work from other researchers, shows that across an array of analytic approaches, e-cigarettes and other nicotine vaping products function as what economists call ‘substitutes’ for conventional cigarettes. In practical terms, if e-cigarettes and cigarettes are substitutes, then raising the price of one on average leads people to increase use of the other.
“Given extensive peer-reviewed evidence indicating that these products are substitutes, an unintended but inevitable effect of increasing taxes on e-cigarettes is to increase cigarette use. Given that cigarettes are believed to be substantially more harmful than e-cigarettes, this effect on cigarette use is concerning.”
He states:
- Simulating the current bill’s e-cigarette tax on teen tobacco use indicates that this policy would reduce teen e-cigarette use by 2.7 percentage points, but that 2 in 3 teens who do not use e-cigarettes due to the tax would smoke cigarettes instead. This would result in approximately a half million extra teenage smokers overall
- The tax would raise the number of daily adult cigarette smokers by 2.5 million nationally and reduce adult e-cigarette users by a similar number
- For every e-cigarette pod eliminated by an e-cigarette tax, more than 5.5 extra packs of cigarettes are sold instead
- For every three pregnant women that do not use e-cigarettes due to an e-cigarette tax, one smokes cigarettes instead
Professor Pesko concluded: “Scientific evidence supports e-cigarettes providing immediate benefits as a harm reduction product. Overall, my scientific opinion is that raising taxes on e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products to levels equivalent to cigarettes will increase cigarette use across all populations and cause significant public health harm.”
News from:https://www.planetofthevapes.co.uk/news/vaping-news/2021-11-25_pesko-s-tax-proposals.html