No matter the amount of nicotine in the containers, stores are looking down the barrel at a $5.40 or $9 wholesale tax on every bottle of e-liquid, which owners say is unsustainable. The bottles contain anywhere between zero and 18 milligrams of nicotine. Though some vape shops carry products such as Juul, they primarily offer customizable vape pens along with 60 or 100-milliliter bottles of e-liquid. That's not the case with the smaller model of vape sellers, which is composed of independent businesses owners who operate between 300 and 400 adult-only vape shops all around Washington. Major distributors and retailers will have the fiscal flexibility to swallow the tax hike. Juul pods contain 0.7 milliliters of nicotine-laced e-liquid and come in packs of four, so Washington's new tax would raise the cost of a pack by about a buck. These products are sold at convenience stores and drug stores in large, teen-epidemic-level quantities. The larger one, funded by Big Tobacco, sells closed systems such as Juul and other e-cigs. Two separate business models drive the vape industry. This is the bill that Juul built," said Kim Thompson, owner of The Vaporium and president of the Pink Lung Brigade. They say the tax looks like it's structured to hit Big Tobacco harder than small business, but, in reality, the vape tax is a huge win for Big Tobacco. Though people tend to be rightly pissed about passing regressive sin taxes that further impoverish poor, vulnerable people, the vape community is ultra-super-mega pissed about this one. "I’m going to try to figure something out so we don’t have to pass the tax onto the consumer, but other stores like mine will have to close." "It's definitely going to be devastating," said Zach McLain, who runs Future Vapor in Seattle. They say the tax will force them to shut down. Washington's brick-and-mortar vape shop owners are in a state of shock. The tax will raise $19.1 million in revenue over the course of two years, with half of the money going into the state's public health services account and the rest going to fund cancer research, programs designed to prevent tobacco/vape use among teens, and enforcement. "Open" systems, like those battery-powered devices with refillable cartridges of e-liquid that make people look like they're exhaling giant ghosts, will be taxed at $0.09 per milliliter. Gerry Pollet, taxes "closed" vape products such as Juul and other corporate e-cigarettes at $0.27 per milliliter. In a final flurry of late-night votes before session's end, the Legislature passed a new sales tax on vapor products. The dreams of vape store owners are going up in arguably non-carcinogenic vapor.
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