We previously covered an effort by Washington State progressives to ban nicotine flavors and raise taxes on nicotine pouches like ZYN and Rogue.

It turns out that before the legislature shuttered for 2025, progressives rammed through a bill to do tax hikes—though thankfully, they left the flavoring ban language out.

Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5814 amends existing Washington State law so that a 95 percent tax rate will now apply to nicotine pouches that the US Food and Drug Administration under President Biden deemedless harmful than conventional, combustible cigarettes.

Surprisingly, the bill took a pass on raising taxes on actual cigarettes. 

According to Dr. Ray Niaura, Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and expert on tobacco dependence and treatment at New York University, the nicotine pouch tax is “misguided and it’s a missed opportunity.” 

Niaura said in a recent interview following the bill’s passage that “if we’re interested as a society in saving people from the death and disability associated with smoking cigarettes we ought to be encouraging them to move the safer products like the nicotine pouches and one way to do that would be to tax them at a lesser rate compared to cigarettes.”

Legislators were under pressure to pass tax hikes, given that the state is carrying a $12 billion deficit and unlike even-more-progressive Vermont, Washington has a balanced budget requirement. The 95 percent hike will help with that.

However, if the bill is signed into law by Gov. Bob Ferguson, it will likely come at a cost to public health.

Ferguson has not tipped his hand as to what tax increases he might accept and which he might reject—though he has indicated he is not happy with tax increases, in general.

According to KING5, just weeks ago, Ferguson “called a proposal to raise $12 billion in new or hiked taxes ‘risky’ and ‘unsustainable.’”

Opponents of the tax increase on nicotine pouches hope he will wield his veto pen to nix it.

The tax increase bill was passed only by Democrats in the state legislature, though they did bleed support in pushing it through.

In the House, all supporters of the bill were Democrats, with all Republicans—plus Reps. Bernbaum, Bronoske, Hackney, Leavitt, Paul, Richards, Rule, Shavers, and Timmons voting with the GOP and against the tax-hiking bill.

In the Senate, again, the bill received no Republican support. Sens. Chapman, Cortes, and Krishnadasan joined their GOP colleagues to vote against the bill.

Ferguson had 20 days from Monday to decide whether to sign or veto the bill, but notably he does have a line-item veto, so could excise tax hikes from it.

“I look forward to carefully reviewing the budgets line by line,” Ferguson said in a statement.