In Case You Haven't Heard…

If you want to decrease use, raise the price. Do it with taxes, and you also improve your state's revenue. It worked with cigarettes. Now, it's time to do it with nicotine. But there is a paradox. Cigarette tax revenues go down when cigarettes are smuggled in. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul's executive budget proposes making nicotine pouches subject to the same 75% excise tax on the wholesale price of tobacco products. This may be awkward, because in New York, cigarette smuggling has resulted in a 21% decline in tax collections. Smuggled cigarettes come via truck from lower‐tax states. Nicotine, not tobacco, is addictive, but it is still somewhat amazing that a pack of 20 cigarettes is worth $15 to anybody. That's the price in New York, where excise taxes constitute just under $6 of that pack (in Missouri, the excise tax is 17 cents per pack).