Judy Gallager
  1. Congressional Democrats plan to double the Federal Tobacco Tax – a clear violation of President Biden’s pledge to not raise taxes on anyone earning under $400,000
  2. This will disproportionately harm the poorest Americans and increase income inequalities: 72% of smokers are low-income earners. In some states poorer smokers already spend one quarter of their income on tobacco
     
  3. Tobacco Tax hikes have been shown to do nothing to reduce smoking rates
     
  4. Tobacco tax hikes have been proven to lead to more smuggling by international criminal syndicates, often with terrorist links, which the State Department calls “a threat to national security”
     
  5. Democrats also plan to increases taxes on people trying to quit smoking though e-cigarettes,  smokeless tobacco, heated tobacco, or nicotine pouches by thousands of percent, in some cases by thousands of percent.
     
  6. New taxes will be imposed on products authorized by the FDA to be marketed as putting people “at a lower risk of mouth cancer, heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis”  and “help addicted adult smokers transition away from combusted cigarettes and reduce their exposure to harmful chemicals“.
     
  7. A new vaping tax would make some e-cigarettes more expensive than combustible tobacco – despite them being 95% safer and recommended by over 50 of the world’s leading medical bodies.
     
  8. A large-scale analysis from the US’s top cancer researchers coordinated by Georgetown University Medical Center found that 6.6 million American lives can be saved if a majority of cigarette smokers switched to vaping.
     
  9. Academic modelling has shown that the vaping tax will lead to more than 2.75 million additional American smokers