Hawaii state legislature put forth a bill last week with the intention of banning electronic cigarette sales to minors. At The SafeCig, we are happy to support any legislature that prohibits those who are under legal age from acquiring any product containing nicotine. However, the bill in question aims to classify electronic cigarettes and accessories as a tobacco product and impose a 70% tax on those items.
A petition has been created at Change.org to request the Governor of Hawaii to reconsider this bill as it is written.
Rather than conducting the necessary research to create a specific classification of the product and applying a fair tax policy for it, Hawaii's state legislature is merely attempting to classify the product as tobacco and apply the egregious tax rates that are applied to tobacco to electronic cigarettes too. Levying this hefty of a tax on the product would virtually wipe out any local vendors as they would not be able to compete with their out-of-state and international counterparts that are not subject to this unfair tax.
Customers would then be forced to buy their products from vendors out-of-state on the internet, or put down their ecigs and return to smoking again. Any and all local vendors would either be forced to relocate their operations to another state or face closure due to the competitive disadvantage that would be placed on them.
© 2007 - 2012 The Safe Cig. All Rights Reserved. | 