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

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a invoice that may have raised the minimal age to buy and legally possess tobacco merchandise from 19 to 21 years outdated.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.