So let's see here - the state's policy discourages the use of a low-taxed item (e-cigarettes) and transfers demand to the use of a very-highly-taxed item (tobacco cigarettes).

Well, color me all surprised and stuff. The state acts so as to maximize its tax revenues. I'm amazed. Amazed, I tell you.

llater,

llamas

Great point, llamas.

As a wise person once said to me, when the question is the money or the principle, it's usually the money.

I find it very hard to imagine that lawmakers or bureaucrats would overtly think or say 'Yes, let's try and suppress the use of e-cigarettes to protect our obscene tax revenues from tobacco.' But you have to ask yourself how it is that there is an almost-hysterical opposition to e-cigarettes, complete with ghastly scare stories about the terrible dangers of e-cigarette fluids, tales of exploding e-cigarettes, and bans on the use of e-cigarettes despite abundant proof that they pose no risk to the health of anyone but the user.

Anti-tobacco advocates are even more extreme in their strident opposition to any use of e-cigarettes, a proven approach to reduce the use of real tobacco and the harm it causes the user and (maybe) others. It's almost like they don't actually want tobacco users to quit or something. Since many are funded largely by taxes and penalties levied on tobacco users and makers - perhaps they don't.

I theorize that, in this mixture of tax-seeking lawmakers and bureaucrats and relentless nanny-state do-gooders, the desire to keep the tax and grant money flowing that comes from the activity they claim to despise is actually subliminal - they don't even have to overtly form the thought that 'If we actually meant what we say, success would put us out of work or cut our income', they can grasp it subconsciously and never even have to think it. Baptists and bootleggers.

llater,

llamas

Light 'em if you got 'em. It's for the children!

In most places, at least some portion of cigarette taxes go to fund children's issues, often medical care for the poor.

Chief Wiggum [to Ralphie]: "What is your continuing fascination with my forbidden closet of mystery?"

Let it be known I am in favor of encouraging the children to smoke.

As we all know, many of them have stressful, overscheduled lives and taking a smoke break might relieve some of the tension. For those whose lives are dangerously underscheduled (and underparented), smoking will give them something to do.

They already contribute nothing to the tax base. Purchasing heavily taxed cigarettes would at least show good faith that they were helping pull the wagon, not just riding in the back.

Reminds me of dear humorist/journalist Fran Lebowitz:

"Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky. One can only assume that this has something to do with not smoking enough."

And:

"Children do not really need money. After all, they don't have to pay rent or send mailgrams. Therefore their allowance should be just large enough to cover chewing gum and an occasional pack of cigarettes. A child with his own savings account and/or tax shelter is not going to be a child who scares easy."