Georgia House lawmakers revived a proposal Wednesday to slap an excise tax on vaping in Georgia and raise the minimum age for who can purchase tobacco and vaping products from 18 to 21.
A bill sponsored by Rep. Bonnie Rich, R-Suwanee, was shot down on the state House floor in March over a late change that cut the proposed 7% excise tax in half for so-called “modified-risk” tobacco items, like smokeless dip.
Lawmakers in the House Ways and Means Committee picked Rich’s proposal back up Wednesday with the full 7% tax restored for all tobacco and nicotine products, including vaping devices.
It was inserted into a measure by Sen. Jeff Mullis, R-Chickamauga, that aims to raise the statewide minimum age to 21 for both cigarette and vaping purchases.
The committee sent Mullis’s measure, Senate Bill 375, to the full House for a vote. If passed, it would then need approval from the Senate.
Rich, whose House Bill 864 originally carried the tax proposal, said in committee Wednesday the charge on vape sales would help promote safety for kids as more and more youth acquire a taste for vaping in Georgia and the U.S.
“We need to get in front of this and start regulating this industry to protect our youth,” Rich said.
Vaping manufacturers and store owners opposed Rich’s bill earlier this year, warning that higher prices on vaping products could drive smokers back to tobacco after using vaping devices to kick the habit. They also argued certain licensing rules in the bill could kill small businesses in Georgia.
“When you raise the price of this product, people will go back to smoking,” said Keith Gossett, owner of Bucky’s Vape Shop in Columbus, at a hearing in February.
Nearly 500,000 people die each year in the U.S. from tobacco-caused diseases, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But supporters of a tax and tighter rules on vaping have stressed the need to protect children from vaping, particularly in light of the risk that kids who get hooked on nicotine could gravitate to cigarettes.
They point to data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration showing nearly 4 million middle and high school students used vaping products in 2018, a large increase from the prior year.
“The vape epidemic among our youth has not subsided,” Rich said Wednesday.
The return of Rich’s vape-tax proposal comes as lawmakers mull raising the current sales tax on cigarettes to help plug the state’s budget deficit amid the economic slowdown spurred by coronavirus.
A separate measure to boost the cigarette sales tax from 37 cents per pack to $1.35 that backers say could raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the state passed out of the Senate Finance Committee in recent days and now awaits consideration on the Senate floor.