The U.K. Newly Planned Tax on Vaping Might Accidentally Turbo-Charge its Sales:

Although this is one of the times that my naiveté might cause me to believe that this is a good thing, and in truth, a tax on Vaping is a good thing as a deterrence to those who want to start and a reason to want those who do to stop but the way the Government wants to implement it is asinine. The government’s desire might seem good-willed at first but let’s put our big boy and big girl brains on here and walk with me. The government has placed taxes on the end consumer, i.e. the total VAT on the item, which makes the vape even more expensive on their end, instead they should have put a tax on the earnings of the tobacco companies if they increased the companies tax liabilities then that would generally force the competition to all increase their prices to make up the difference. In this cart-before-the-horse situation, however, Big Tobacco companies like the British American Tobacco Company (BAT), can decide to take a temporary loss by not adjusting the prices or even make theirs cheaper in order to allow the competition to “sweat it out” (in essence run out of money because they cannot compete) and then when there is a pseudo-monopoly, they one by one hike their prices which causes others to hike their prices.

Not to be an alarmist or anything but this growing Vaping Epidemic might become the U.K’s version of the American Opioid Crisis. However, the signs are there, just as Purdue and other Opioid pain medication makers (Big Pharma) increased the number of milligrams from 20mg to 180mg at its peak after creating their own pseudo-monopolies with the creators of Valium, and Vicodin to increase their own MG, or when Big Tobacco in America upped the amount of nicotine in their vape pens almost 30 times, not 30%, 30x. All this feels like it was birthed in the mind of McKinsey consultants as they have advised the same thing to their clients. I would highly recommend my readers to read “When McKinsey Comes to Town” by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, in particular, “Turbocharging the Opioid Crisis,” and “Big Tobacco” Chapters, it is also a free audiobook for paying Spotify subscribers.

There is an understated Tobacco and Nicotine crisis we are facing within Europe and this policy, and its implementation would only Turbocharge the crisis. BAT said it supports the introduction of a “low” excise tax on the nicotine-infused liquid in vapes to better control the market, but said a tax linked to nicotine content would be difficult to enforce. “We encourage the government to implement a vape tax sooner than October 2026 to tackle the illicit market that is already prolific,” a BAT UK spokesperson added unsurprisingly. [Reuters]