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Taxes may keep smokers from switch to vaping. Is that good?

Research on risks to youth helped drive California vote

By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press
Published: November 27, 2016, 5:59am

SAN DIEGO — Smoking has dropped to historic lows nationwide, dramatically decreasing revenue from tobacco taxes. In search of funds, a growing number of states are taxing electronic cigarettes — a trend that is sparking a fierce public health debate over whether it will deter smokers from switching to a potentially safer alternative.

California is the seventh state to tax e-cigarettes after a Nov. 8 ballot measure. Proposition 56 also adds a $2 per pack state tax to cigarettes.

State officials are still calculating the new tax structure. The vaping industry estimates the tax could make it more expensive to vape than smoke, even with the additional per-pack tobacco tax.

“California just made the most attractive option unattractive for many smokers, and unaffordable,” said Gregory Conley of the American Vaping Association, which advocates for electronic cigarettes as an alternative to tobacco. “Some may never make an attempt to quit.”

The taxation of e-cigarettes has split the public health community between those who support e-cigarettes’ being treated the same as tobacco and those who see them as an important tool in the fight against smoking, the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States.

There’s no scientific consensus on the risks or advantages of “vaping.”

“It’s one of the nastiest debates I’ve ever seen in the public health community, and I’ve been researching tobacco control policies for 40 years,” University of Michigan public health professor Kenneth Warner said. “The momentum, if you will, is in the direction against e-cigarettes, for sure, and it is unfortunate in a big way, because we may be missing out on a potential intervention that could reduce the toll of smoking by a lot.”

Britain promotes the devices for smokers. Its leading physicians organization said it found the devices were 95 percent safer than cigarettes. Some U.S. researchers dispute that.

E-cigarettes emit chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects and other harm, and there is concern over nicotine’s long-term impact on adolescent brain development, according to California’s Public Health Department. Use among young adults ages 18 to 29 has tripled in the state.

“The evidence is piling up very fast that e-cigarettes are more dangerous than people thought,” said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California at San Francisco. Concern over the jump in youth users was a driving force behind taxing e-cigarettes, he said.

Representatives from about 180 countries, including the United States, adopted a declaration this month in which they vowed to prohibit or regulate the sale of e-cigarettes.

The $3 billion vaping industry fears taxes coupled with regulations will shut down many sellers.

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