By Nadia Ramlagan
Public News Service
Electronic cigarette use or “vaping” is on the rise among teens, and some Kentucky lawmakers believe a tax on e-cigarettes may help deter young people from using them.
State Reps. Kim Moser, R-Taylor Mill, and Jerry T. Miller, R-Louisville, announced a bill last week that would add an excise tax on e-cigarette sales in the state. The tax would be equal to the current $1.10-per-pack tax on traditional cigarettes.
Kentucky lawmakers hope to reduce teen e-cigarette use by adding a tax to e-cigarettes sold in the state. (image from Adobe Stock, via PNS)
Ben Chandler, president of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, said e-cigarettes can deliver just as much nicotine, and pointed out that developing brains are especially vulnerable to the addictive substances and chemicals found in many e-cigarette products.
“There’s a real fear here in Kentucky about this epidemic of vaping,” he said. “It’s gotten out of control, and I think there are a lot of people who recognize that, and they’re looking for ways to curb it. And we think this will help do the trick.”
E-cigarette use has ballooned among high-school and middle-school students in the last two years. At least one in four Kentucky 12th-graders and one in seven eighth-graders use e-cigarettes, according to a recent state survey. While the tax on traditional cigarettes increased by 50 cents per pack last year, there currently is no tax on e-cigarettes.
Miller, who is co-sponsoring the bill, said studies have shown that higher taxes drive down tobacco use among teens. He said he thinks the same effect will happen with e-cigarettes.
“Most of the kids in middle and high school who are using these things are not 18,” he said. “So, they’re getting them somehow. And, I think the past hundred years has proved that prohibition usually doesn’t work, and the best way to get to teen use, affect teen use, is through price.”
A handful of states, including Illinois and West Virginia, already have implemented statewide taxes on e-cigarette products. If it becomes law, the new tax would go into effect next summer.
The bill’s text is online at healthy-ky.org.
