Proposed legislation would add e-cigarettes to the tobacco tax rolls

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Sen. Magalei Logovi’i is the sponsor of a bill seeking to amend the Tobacco Restriction Act and the American Samoa Smoke Free Environment Act to include electronic cigarettes — commonly referred to as e-cigarette — to the definition of tobacco products and the definition of smoking — thus adding e-cigarettes and liquid tobacco to items that are taxed.

The legislation — introduced in the Senate late last week — will be taken up when the Fono convenes in July for the 4th and final session of the 37th Legislature. And the bill’s preamble cited statistics from the 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) conducted for both middle school and high school.

In the YRBS American Samoa high school survey, 81.8% of 2,091 survey respondents in grades 9-12 - ages 14 to 18 years and older — reported that they frequently smoked cigarettes on 20 or more days during the 30-days before the survey and nearly 16% used an electronic vapor product on at least one-day during the 30 days before the survey.

According to the preamble, e-cigarettes are an electronic device that heat a liquid and produce an aerosol. They are manufactured in all shapes and sizes. A majority operate by battery with a heating element and a place to hold liquid.

“Some look like regular cigarettes, cigars or pipes while others look like USB flash drives, pens, and other everyday items,” the preamble states and noted that “it is critical for us to update our Tobacco Restriction Act in order to keep up with the new tobacco available to our young people.”

“It is our continued goal to protect the health and wellbeing of our youth and young adults from the dangers of tobacco consumption,” it says.

The bill seeks to added to the current definition of tobacco products, to including “all forms of tobacco products that contain nicotine” as well as “electronic delivery systems, including e-cigarettes, e-liquids, gels, pipe tobacco, dip, snuff, etc.”

The definition of electronic cigarettes, according language in the bill, means any electronic oral device, such as one composed of a battery, heating element, and a cartridge, which provides a vapor of nicotine or any other substances, and the use or inhalation of which simulates smoking.

Furthermore, the term shall include any such or similar device, whether manufactured, distributed, marketed, or sold as an e-cigarette, e-cigar, e-pipe or any other product name or descriptor.

Currently the tax is 36-cents per cigarette or cigar and for each 10 grams of smoking tobacco. 

The legislation adds to this provision the 36 cent per “e-cigarette”, “or per 10 ml of liquid tobacco/e-liquid”.

According to the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the use of e-cigarettes is unsafe for kids, teens, and young adults. Additionally, most e-cigarettes contain nicotine — which is highly addictive and can harm adolescent brain development, which continues into the early to mid-20s.

“Young people who use e-cigarettes may be more likely to smoke cigarettes in the future,” said CDC, which provides more information on this issue online (www.cdc.gov), under the section “electronic cigarettes”.