DENVER — Targeting teen nicotine vaping, Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday declared a late-session invoice to ask Colorado voters to significantly raise taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products and impose taxes on nicotine vaping devices.
“We have a moral imperative to decrease smoking and vaping we have a financial imperative for public health,” Polis said.
Breaking: Democrats propose tax increase on cigarettes and e-cigarettes. Proposal calls for 62 percent tax increase on ecigs, cigarettes will be $2.59 per pack #coleg #copolitics #kdvr pic.twitter.com/1rJIDcuj1n
— Joe St. George (@JoeStGeorge) April 24, 2019
Legislation being sponsored by Rep. Yadira Caraveo and Sen. Rhonda Fields, both Democrats, would ask voters in November if Colorado’s sales tax on cigarettes should increase from 84 cents to $2.59 a bunch.
The national median in 2018 was $1.66 per pack, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
Nicotine vaping devices would be taxed at 62 percent of their price, if approved by voters. So, too, would tobacco products.
When asked why he waited until 7 business days before the end of the session to introduce this bill, Polis said “talks have been underway for several months. ”
More than $300 million a year could be generated by the tax hikes for cessation programs and early childhood education, tobacco prevention, mental health and other services, the Democratic governor told a news conference.
A nicotine solution heats which ’s inhaled.
A Colorado government study indicates 27 percent of minors regularly use the apparatus — one of the highest rates in the country.
Experts say vaping can lead to tobacco usage — and that making smoking more costly deters youth and motivates smokers to quit.
The average cost of a pack of cigarettes in Colorado is $5.60, including taxes, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The proposed increase would bump that to about $8.19.
In 2016, Colorado voters defeated a proposal to triple the state cigarette tax. The tax was increased in 2004.
Some 7 percent of Colorado minors and nearly 15 percent of adults smoked cigarettes according to the state Department of Public Health and Environment.
The percentage of adult tobacco users has declined from 20 percent in 2004.
Democrats who control the Legislature are certain to pass the initiative ends May 3.
However, an effort is underway to defeat the measure.
Vaping groups have hired Ted Trimpa, a progressive lobbyist, to work to defeat this bill.
“I think it s going to be tricky to get this through in the last ten days of the session,” Trimpa said.
Business owners like Amanda Wheeler, an owner of vape shows in Colorado Springs, said “that this will shut down my business. ”
Users like Matt Bernal says that this will discourage smokers from quitting since this makes vaping expensive.
“It’s been an ideal match for me to quit tobacco,” Bernal said.
“I quit and was able to slow down,” Bernal addded.
Polis, a first-term governor, already has signed into law a bill allowing local municipalities to impose their own regulations and taxes on tobacco products, such as e-cigarettes, without losing their stocks of the state’s tobacco tax.
Another bill to restrict where e-cigarettes can be used in a bid to combat rising teen utilization of nicotine-containing vaping apparatus is pending in the Senate.
The bill would add cigarettes and other vaping apparatus to the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act, which restricts tobacco usage and in many areas.
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