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SternSkipper -> RE: Hawaii Considering Classifying E-Cigarattes with Tobacco For Taxation (2/5/2012 9:39:29 PM)
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Thanks for quoting Rich or I'd never have seen his re-invention of the wheel.
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First, we don't call the tobacco tax, a tax on fine paper and a fibrous filter, and I'm going to assume the nicotine it delivers is still derived from tobacco. It is a device/machine that delivers a drug, and that drug is what they are taxing.
Ummmmm ... That's california I guess. not apparently Hawaii ... I would read part of of the bill's text and then look at the standing statute, while delivery methods are included, they classify tobacco and non-tobacco together. The Senator that I spoke with told me "we do it for simplification"<rrrriiiiiiiiight> [8D] Rich and I probably don't disagree on the motivation. My affidavit will be among those read aloud in committee.
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Second, don't kid yourself. Nicotine is the addiction, not the particular delivery system. That is secondary, as are the associated rituals. An alternate may help with breaking those habits, but you are still ultimately going to have to go through the nicotine withdrawal phase. The last time I quit, I was down to one piece of nicotine gum every other day, and hadn't smoked a cigarette in 5 weeks. When I shifted completely to regular gum, the cravings were right back to the intensity of the first few days.
Who said nicotine wasn't addictive???? Gawd... . Try addictive with a CAPITAL FUCKING A[:D]
I used e-cigarettes to quit when nothing else had worked for me during most of my adult life. Here's what i think set it apart. It's a series of user based processes that have to be performed by the end user basically a couple times a day in order for it to be a 'good experience' (from a smoker's perspective). Even Rich, perhaps without realizing , but perhaps so, hints at the aspect that helped me.
He keeps one in his drawer for those times when he can't step outside (probably hurts business with all those people down in the street yelling "jump"[:D]).
I found that if I restricted myself from smoking actual tobacco products, that eventually, it became a sufficient hassle that I just slowly stopped. At first I was vaping all the time, later on I would do it more so just when I felt a nicotine fit coming on and then for a while it was just one the way into Boston, after lunch, after dinner and once before bed. And a few weeks after that, I had simply stopped.
The really odd thing is that when I started doing this the only thing I seriously wanted to do was see if I could switch to the other delivery method.
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the price of tobacco products make me cringe a bit, but will i quit just because of that?
unlikely.
See ... you kind of point to why I don't want the prices of stuff like e-cigarettes and e-juice to go up from taxation... Nicotine addiction is psycho-pharmacologically very powerful and I spent a lot of time 'noticing' my thinking in the early stages of heading towards the e-cigg as a method ... I looked at the really expensive ones (incidentally, as of now there are only about 4 designs of the devices and most are rather similar, with the big differences being materials used, wattage, and threading of the screw-together parts. ... though the volcanoes I used to vape come with some interesting options such as the drip tips and cartomizers which allowed precise control over dosage.
But I digress, I balked at the expensive ones cause "what if they suck?" ... I balked at the cheap Chinese imports, because "what if they suck AND fall apart?". See, my addicted psyche may have been afraid to lose it's smoldering friends and fought hard to keep them.
Now imagine someone who who smokes and thinks about the cost "a little", but is "unlikely to quit because of taxes increases".
It's just my theory, but I have a good friend who works as a Dr in research surrounding alcohol addiction and he gives it high marks saying it's similar to other behaviors reported by smokers.
Anyway, I hope that fleshes it out better for you.
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