In recent days, Washington legislators have rolled out a new bill, HB 2068, banning the sale of flavored nicotine products and imposing a steep, new, flat tax on all products containing nicotine—pouches, vapor and cigarettes. 

As with similar legislation in other states, the ostensible goal of the bill is to stop smoking and prevent kids from taking up nicotine use. A definite goal is also, of course, to help fill Washington’s gaping budget hole.

However, a slew of research conducted by top scientists draws the effectiveness of tobacco flavoring bans into question.  And some of those scientists are also warning about the risk of tax policy exactly like that wrapped up in the bill—plus knock-on ill effects for public health, and public health budgets, down the line.

The overall risk researchers are pointing to is that if the bill passes, it could actually push Evergreen State residents—including and maybe even especially kids—towards more actual smoking.

As far back as 2021, Yale University professor Dr. Abigail S. Friedman found that “San Francisco’s ban on flavored tobacco product sales was associated with higher odds of self-reported recent smoking among minor high school students relative to trends in other school districts.” Friedman’s research concluded, “This raises potential concerns that reducing access to flavored electronic nicotine delivery systems may motivate youths who would otherwise vape to substitute smoking.”

Subsequent studies from George Washington University academics and the University of Missouri’s Michael Pesko have found the same thing. 

Meanwhile, research from New York University’s Dale Maglalang found that “e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches [offer promise] as potential harm reduction tools” for marginalized communities.

Dr. Ray Niaura is a Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at NYU, where Maglalang also teaches and researches. In an emailed statement, he told us that “Sales bans on flavored nicotine products, such as nicotine pouches and e-cigarettes, can result in undesirable consequences, [such as leading] current users of these products (both adolescents and adults) back to smoking cigarettes.” 

Niaura adds that “Taxing reduced risk tobacco products, such as nicotine pouches and vapes, at high levels will discourage their use, but will also drive people back to smoking cheaper cigarettes.” He suggests instead differentiated rates of tax that incentivize smokers “to switch to safer, lower risk products, quit smoking, and end up costing taxpayers less in health care costs.” If the state’s budget deficit and fiscal health is indeed a priority, that last phrase seems especially worthy of note.

Rep. Christine Reeves (D-Federal Way) is the lead sponsor of HB 2068, which adopts a very different approach to that advocated by Niaura and that indicated by the Yale, GWU, University of Missouri and NYU studies. Her bill includes a 95 percent sales tax on “vapor products, tobacco products, and alternative nicotine products.” 

Reeves appears to be motivated by the experience of watching her mother die of cancer after having started smoking at age nine—and by her experience of being exposed to second-hand smoke. Notably, none of those risks is currently indicated by science as existing where an individual uses a nicotine pouch or vapor. Indeed, nicotine pouches emit nothing to inhale, and vapor products do not emit smoke. Yet the bill taxes both vapor and pouches the same as deadly cigarettes—and at a very steep rate.

Proponents of bills like Reeves’ say that is because they worry vapor or pouches could theoretically serve as a “gateway product” to conventional, combustible cigarettes. 

However, that risk has not been established as a matter of science. And in fact, the Yale, GWU, NYU and University of Missouri research demonstrates that removing non-cigarette flavored products—like nicotine pouches and vapor— from the market is what actually spurs uptake of cigarettes, including by youth, not the availability of flavored products. Equalizing taxes on these products, despite the differential in harm caused by them, could also help fuel migration to conventional, deadly cigarettes.

Of note, the US Food and Drug Administration, under the administration of President Biden, gave premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) status to nicotine pouches. That means that FDA found that “due to substantially lower amounts of harmful constituents than cigarettes and most smokeless tobacco products, such as moist snuff and snus, the authorized products pose lower risk of cancer and other serious health conditions than such products.” In granting PMTA status, FDA also pointed to “study showing that a substantial proportion of adults who use cigarette and/or smokeless tobacco products completely switched to the newly authorized nicotine pouch products.”

In Great Britain, which has a fully socialized health care system, vapor products are recommended by the National Health Service to help smokers quit or reduce their harm. Apparently, proponents of a broad social safety net, and the medical experts working within it, see the utility in e-cigarettes as a harm reduction tool.

Despite all this, sponsors of HB 2068—namely Reps. Reeves, Parshley, Ryu, Pollet, Macri, and Gregerson—apparently continue to regard vapor and nicotine pouches as equally harmful to cigarettes, and equally worth tapping to fix the state’s budget problems. 

If their bill passes, the deficit may shrink—but so too could the pool of teenagers who say “no” to cigarettes, and adults who ditch them for less damaging products.