If 13 million people repeated at every opportunity that heat sticks are smoking and unsafe that might be enough to crush the products. If government saw that as a realistic threat they might be more reasonable with vaping. No realistic taxes on vaping can come close to making up the lost taxes. Heat sticks can perfectly maintain the tax status quo. But the states are greedy. They want all smokers and non smokers to be taxed the same. A heat stick monopoly is the only way to do that.