COLORADO: State Lawmakers Aim To Temper Teen Vaping Rates With Big Tax Increases.

Gov. Jared Polis joined public health advocates and high school students at the state Capitol on Wednesday to announce HB 19-1333, which would ask voters in the fall to increase taxes on cigarettes and impose new taxes on nicotine vaping devices, like the popular JUUL.

“We have a moral imperative to reduce teen smoking and vaping. We have financial imperative for public health,” Polis said.

The governor said the new bill was personal to him. His partner’s mother, a lifelong smoker, died at 58 from lung cancer.

Under the proposal, vaping devices, the pods that contain liquid nicotine and tobacco products would be taxed at 62 percent of their wholesale price. The cigarette tax would more than triple.

That new revenue line would raise more than $300 million annually for Colorado.

Prediction: It won’t.