Politicians haven't been having that much luck in recent years trying to balance their budgets and Kansas hasn't fared to well in that respect. Ever eager to find new sources of revenue without for a moment thinking of the damage that could be caused, Kansas is looking at closing a near $800m deficit by taxing e-cigarettes. It may help finances but what about the health of the voters?





Sen Sen. Les Donovan, R-Wichita, chairs the Senate Taxation Committee and hasn't got any exact figures sorted out yet but he is preparing to let his financial claws dig into the e-cigarette industry . That's not pleasing local businessmen including Ian Williams, owner of Juicy's Vapor. He sees the potential move as "just greed". He adds: "It's trying to get their hands on more money. I mean, why would they put a tax on it? Why put a tax on this?"





Well there's a very simple answer to why they want to tax e-cigarettes. It's a business that continues to grow and politicians can't bear the thought that they're not making any money out of it. Of course another reason for imposing a tax is the fact that rising e-cigarette sales mean falling tobacco sales and a drop in tax revenue that has to be replaced somehow. Donovan floated his idea of taxing e-cigarettes during a meeting of the Senate Taxation Committee. He's not thinking of taxing the product at the level of traditional poisonous cigarettes, well not for starters anyway. At present e-cigarettes are only subject to the state sales tax applied to all products, you see it's never easy to escape the taxman.





“Much safer, probably, we don’t know for sure — much healthier, less unhealthy than smoking tobacco cigarettes,” is how Donovan sees e-cigarettes. He added: "So we want to try to keep the tax, in my mind, we want to try to keep that tax lower, significantly lower than the same equivalent tax on a pack of cigarettes.” That's a good job because at the moment Kansas imposes a 79% per-pack tax on tobacco cigarettes but plans are afoot to increase that figure. An increase on the tax for tobacco would most likely mean a higher tax rate on e-cigarettes. Just what would be taxed isn't known yet as the senator makes his policies up as he goes along. Would the tax be on the nicotine, the e-cigarette or the e-liquid?





Even before the senator works out what he's doing (if he's anything like the FDA we could be waiting a while), his ideas are meeting with opposition. To Palace, director of the Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association of Kansas, says his organization opposes the idea of increased taxes on tobacco and taxing e-cigarettes. Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City is against it too but he's just using it as a political football moaning about the state of finances in the state. The possibility of users turning away from vaping and going back to smoking doesn't really concern him, getting power is all he cares about.

A key sentence from Donovan is this comment on e-cigarettes: "That's going to be a very, very fas-growing business." I bet when he said that you could almost see the dollar signs in his eyes as he thought of all that extra tax revenue. Williams knows that the real issue regarding e-cigarettes is how they are helping his customers: "People tell me all the time how much better they feel, even after a couple weeks, a couple months. They’ll be sitting at home and they don’t hear themselves breathing anymore. They’re not labored breathing anymore. They smell better.People notice a change in their lives. They’re happier.”



