Alaska

Alaska governor vetoes bill to tax e-cigs and raise minimum age for tobacco

Published

2 years ago

September 11, 2022

Alaska governor vetoes bill to tax e-cigs and raise minimum age for tobacco

Jeremy Wong smokes an e-cigarette in 2018 in California. On Friday, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed a invoice that included a tax on digital smoking merchandise that comprise nicotine. (Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Photos)

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Friday vetoed a invoice that may have raised the minimal age to buy and legally possess tobacco merchandise from 19 to 21 years outdated. The invoice additionally included a tax on digital smoking merchandise that comprise nicotine, which is what Dunleavy took challenge with.

At present, Alaska has a cigarette tax of $2 per pack. Different tobacco merchandise, like cigars, are taxed at 75% of the wholesale worth. Digital smoking merchandise like vape pens that comprise nicotine, however, usually are not topic to tax on the statewide stage, although some municipalities have levied their very own tax.

The tax portion of the invoice was aimed toward discouraging folks from getting addicted, stated invoice sponsor Kodiak Republican Sen. Gary Stevens.

“One of many issues we’ve seen in tobacco taxation is that each time taxes are elevated on tobacco — and so they have been elevated a number of instances in Alaska — folks cease utilizing it. The quantity of people that use tobacco decreases each time tax goes up,” Stevens stated Friday afternoon.

In numerous variations of Senate Invoice 45, the quantity of tax on e-cigarettes modified over time. When the Senate handed the invoice 15-4, the tax was 45% of the wholesale worth. It acquired modified to 25% within the Home committee course of and once more throughout amendments on the Home flooring. The model that handed the home 31-9 had a 35% tax of the wholesale worth of digital smoking merchandise.

In vetoing the invoice, the governor wrote, “There have been many conversations about what an acceptable stage to tax could be, however in the end a tax enhance on the folks of Alaska is just not one thing I can help.”

The invoice would have put Alaska in step with the federal minimal age, which is 21, to buy tobacco merchandise. The invoice would have additionally raised the minimal age of promoting tobacco merchandise to 21.

Stevens stated if he’s again within the Legislature in January, he’ll pursue one other model of the invoice.

“It simply implies that we’ve to be smarter subsequent yr and work with the administration to make it possible for we provide you with a invoice that they will help. And I believe we’ll,” he stated.

Stevens stated it’s an necessary invoice.

“It’s a problem of nice significance. I believe it ought to be with households and oldsters and youngsters. You don’t need your youngsters hooked on vaping, notably at a younger age.”

That is the solely invoice that Gov. Dunleavy’s has vetoed up to now two years, aside from vetoing particular line gadgets in price range payments. It’s his second veto in his time as governor. The primary invoice he vetoed would have restrained a governor’s capacity to pay some state workers greater than the wage scale and to rent workers for non permanent duties not designated by the Legislature.

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Alaska

Alaska Jewish community prepares to celebrate start of Hanukkah

Published

4 hours ago

December 25, 2024

Press Room

Alaska Jewish community prepares to celebrate start of Hanukkah

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Rabbi Josef Greenberg and Esty Greenberg of Alaska Jewish Campus, joined Alaska’s News Source to explain more about Hanukkah and how Anchorage can celebrate.

They will be hosting Chanukah, The Festival of Lights for “Cirque De Hanukkah,” on Sunday, Dec. 29, at 5 p.m., at the Egan Center.

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Alaska

A Christmas & Hannukah mix of winter weather

Published

11 hours ago

December 25, 2024

Press Room

A Christmas & Hannukah mix of winter weather

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – A variety of winter weather will move through Alaska as we go through Christmas Day and the first night of Hannukah.

A high wind warning started Christmas Eve for Ketchikan, Sitka, and surrounding locations for southeast winds 30-40, gusting to 60 miles per hour. Warnings for the combination of strong winds and snow go to the west coast, western Brooks Range, and Bering Strait.

Anchorage is seeing a low-snow Christmas. December usually sees 18 inches of snow throughout the month. December 2024 has only garnered a paltry 1.5 inches. Snow depth in the city is 7 inches, even though we have seen over 28 inches for the season. A rain-snow mix is likely to hit Prince William Sound, mostly in the form of rain.

A cool-down will start in the interior tomorrow, and that colder air will slip southward. By Friday, the southcentral region will see the chances of snow increase as the temperatures decrease.

The hot spot for Alaska on Christmas Eve was Sitka with 48 degrees. The coldest spot was Atqasuk with 23 degrees below zero.

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Alaska

Santa catches a ride with troops to bring Christmas to Alaska village

Published

21 hours ago

December 24, 2024

Press Room

Santa catches a ride with troops to bring Christmas to Alaska village

YAKUTAT, Alaska — Forget the open-air sleigh overloaded with gifts and powered by flying reindeer.

Santa and Mrs. Claus this week took supersized rides to southeast Alaska in a C-17 military cargo plane and a camouflaged Humvee, as they delivered toys to the Tlingit village of Yakutat, northwest of Juneau.

The visit was part of this year’s Operation Santa Claus, an outreach program of the Alaska National Guard to largely Indigenous communities in the nation’s largest state. Each year, the Guard picks a village that has suffered recent hardship — in Yakutat’s case, a massive snowfall that threatened to buckle buildings in 2022.

Santa and Mrs. Claus talk to a child in Yakutat as part of the Alaska National Guard’s Operation Santa program Wednesday. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)

“This is one of the funnest things we get to do, and this is a proud moment for the National Guard,” Maj. Gen. Torrence Saxe, adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard, said Wednesday.

Saxe wore a Guard uniform and a Santa hat that stretched his unit’s dress regulations.

The Humvee caused a stir when it entered the school parking lot, and a buzz of “It’s Santa! It’s Santa!” pierced the cold air as dozens of elementary school children gathered outside.

In the school, Mrs. Claus read a Christmas story about the reindeer Dasher. The couple in red then sat for photos with nearly all of the 75 or so students and handed out new backpacks filled with gifts, books, snacks and school supplies donated by the Salvation Army. The school provided lunch, and a local restaurant provided the ice cream and toppings for a sundae bar.

Student Thomas Henry, 10, said while the contents of the backpack were “pretty good,” his favorite item was a plastic dinosaur.

Another, 9-year-old Mackenzie Ross, held her new plush seal toy as she walked around the school gym.

“I think it’s special that I have this opportunity to be here today because I’ve never experienced this before,” she said.

Yakutat, a Tlingit village of about 600 residents, is in the lowlands of the Gulf of Alaska, at the top of Alaska’s panhandle. Nearby is the Hubbard Glacier, a frequent stop for cruise ships.

Some of the National Guard members who visited Yakutat on Wednesday were also there in January 2022, when storms dumped about 6 feet of snow in a matter of days, damaging buildings.

Alaska National Guard soldiers and airmen shovel the roof of a building in Yakutat. (Dana Rosso/U.S. Army National Guard via AP)

Operation Santa started in 1956 when flooding severely curtailed subsistence hunting for residents of St. Mary’s, in western Alaska. Having to spend their money on food, they had little left for Christmas presents, so the military stepped in.

This year, visits were planned to two other communities hit by flooding. Santa’s visit to Circle, in northeastern Alaska, went off without a hitch. Severe weather prevented a visit to Crooked Creek, in the southwestern part of the state, but Christmas was saved when the gifts were delivered there Nov. 16.

“We tend to visit rural communities where it is very isolated,” said Jenni Ragland, service extension director with the Salvation Army Alaska Division. “A lot of kids haven’t traveled to big cities where we typically have Santa and big stores with Christmas gifts and Christmas trees, so we kind of bring the Christmas program on the road.”

After the C-17 Globemaster III landed in Yakutat, it quickly returned to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, an hour away, because there was nowhere to park it at the village’s tiny airport. Later, it returned to pick up the Christmas crew.

Santa and Mrs. Claus, along with their tuckered elves, were seen nodding off on the flight back.

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