The state’s ZYN need of more dough.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is pushing a plan to tax ZYN pouches and other nicotine products at the same rate as cigarettes — but fuming-mad critics say she should back off what they say are less-harmful smoking alternatives.
Under Hochul’s proposed $260 billion state budget unveiled Tuesday, the patches would face the same 75% wholesale tax as cigarettes in a move expected to generate $18 million in the fiscal year beginning April 1.
The new tax would also generate $44 million when fully implemented the following year, according to Hochul’s proposal.
But the new tax on pouches “raises serious concerns from both a public health and affordability standpoint,” a spokesperson for ZYN manufacturer Philip Morris said.
ZYN was the first nicotine pouch approved for sale by the US Food and Drug Administration last January.
About 1.4 million New Yorkers still smoke cigarettes, considered the most harmful form of nicotine consumption.
Smoking rates are highest among low income and less educated households, Philip Morris said.
“These adults deserve access to better alternatives and studies show that placing a tax of this magnitude makes it harder for adults to switch off cigarettes,” the Philip Morris statement said.
The company praised Hochul for looking to make “improving public health and affordability central to her agenda.”
“We share those goals and look forward to working with her Administration and the Legislature on solutions that ensure adults looking to transition away from smoking are not discouraged from using better alternatives,” the ZYN manufacturer added.
Some medical and law enforcement experts agreed with the tobacco giant that taxing alternative nicotine patches at the same rate as smokes is a mistake.
“Tax policy should reflect relative risk,” said Cristine Delnevo, director at the Rutgers University Institute for Nicotine & Tobacco Studies. “Taxing nicotine pouches the same as other tobacco products could undermine harm reduction, while leaving them untaxed could encourage youth uptake.
“A differentiated, evidence-based tax—above zero but below cigarettes—best serves public health,” she said.
Hochul should focus on cracking down of the criminal networks that peddle illegal cigs and higher nicotine-concentrated vapes into New York, said Richard Marianos, director of the Tobacco Law Enforcement Network and former official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives.
“The tax is counterproductive because people won’t have an alternative. You have to give people an alternative,” Marianos said.
A recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association spurred a discussion with the headline, “Can Nicotine Pouches Help People Quit Smoking?”
ZYN pouches, placed between the lip and gun, come in 3-mg or 6-mg strengths with flavors including coffee, menthol, peppermint and cinnamon.
“Public health somehow has to get around the idea that you just need to quit on your own or with a med, because quite a lot of people are interested in using a less harmful nicotine product like pouches and reducing their smoking,” Jonathan Foulds, a professor of public health sciences and psychiatry and behavioral health at Penn State University, said in JAMA.
On the other side of the issue, critics fear patches could become a new trend like vaping and see an explosion in use among underage users.
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