So the onus is entirely on me because I spoke first?
I already made my point. Like it or not eCigs are the child of the tobacco industry, even if they are a ....... child. No, they're not controlled by BT, but they're an evolution of it, and will eventually be given a luxury tax just like cigarettes are. Most luxury items that are viewed as indulgent, like tobacco and alcohol, are taxed. Ecigs shouldn't be exempt.
As I'm not an economist I can't say why caffeine isn't taxed as well. Maybe someone else has the answer to that one.
I'm not a rich man. If eJuice is taxed like cigarettes are I'll have to cut back my consumption to be able to afford it. That'd suck, but I know that vaping is not something I need to do, just something I like to do. I really think more people need to recognize the difference there. The options are not just vaping or going back to smoking. You could vape less, or, god forbid, just quit.
I'm not sure that YOU recognize the difference. You say this is not something you
need to do, but what makes you think everyone is just like you?
If you do some exploring on this forum, you will find posts from plenty of people who describe how they become dysfunctional when they stop using nicotine. As David Krogh described in
Smoking, The Artificial Passion, "...the smoker begins to turn into something slightly different: a person desirous of his controller, edgy, hostile, depressed, confused. Behold man."
In my case, despite the fact that I did everything I was supposed to do...attended the "learn how to stop smoking class", got the prescription for the patch, stepped down from 21 to 14 to 7 mg in dosage as prescribed, when I took off the last patch, it only took two days to turn me into a basket case, curled up in a ball on my couch, sleeping 12 hours a day, uninterested in personal hygiene, and crying my eyes out without really understanding why.
When I got in my car to go to the doctor, I nearly caused an accident when I looked left, looked right, looked left again and pulled out, only to hear a horn blast, the screech of brakes, and looked in my rear view mirror to see a car inches away from my own. My eyes had probably seen the car coming from the right, but it did not register in my brain. I had several more of these episodes when pulling out of a parking spot or making a left turn. As you might imagine, they were very frightening.
I can be stubborn when I want to be, and I stubbornly refused to stop quitting. Call it "will power" if you like. I kept waiting for those "temporary" withdrawal symptoms to stop. After 6 months, when they had not done so, I went back to the doctor who prescribed the anti-depressant that fixed up the sleeping problem and the depression, and asked her to give me some way to get back the 50 or so IQ points I seemed to have misplaced when I stopped using nicotine. When she told me there was nothing she could prescribe for that, I told her that I couldn't afford to lose my job, and so I was making a conscious decision to resume smoking. My boss had been very understanding about what I was going through for 6 months, but now I was being assigned to work onsite at the client's place of business and my performance was suffering from my inability to concentrate and pay attention.
So, SimianSteam, regardless of what you believe, people are not interchangeable. One person's mere want is another person's minor need, and is still another person's vital need.
Because nicotine improves the ability to concentrate and pay attention, improves mood, improves visual memory, and relieves anxiety, people with special needs in those areas find that nicotine helps them be able to function normally. Those taking anti-psychotic medication often fight terrible side-effects, and nicotine seems to help keep those side-effects under control.
Nicotine analogs are being studied to treat a wide variety of diseases from Parkinson's to Tourette's Syndrome to Ulcerative Colitis.
So I say, if we are going to put a luxury tax on anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medications, drugs to treat ADHD, MCI, dementia, or any other disease with symptoms nicotine can help to control, then--and only then--we can think of nicotine as a luxury. Many people are using nicotine as a low-cost, readily available, self-medication that is darn near free of side effects--especially when compared with drugs typically prescribed to treat those conditions. (Think suicide, think uncontrollable muscle movements, weight gain, etc. etc.)
Some people can get by with using Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) products as their long-term substitute for smoking, but not everyone can. And, again, there's no luxury tax on Nicoderm, Nicotrol, or Nicorette.
Since e-cigarettes are closest in design to pharmaceutical nicotine inhalers, and as far as we know are no more hazardous to health than NRTs, I see no reason to pretend that they are a tobacco product and include them in the Draconian laws that are applied those products.
Ecigs should *not* be subject to tobacco tax because they are not (despite what FDA would have you believe) a tobacco product. 
