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Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

Had they made reusable vapes legal this wouldn’t have been an issue.

Reusable vapes are beyond commonplace in the US and there's still a huge problem with disposables.

For kids, they're expensive to purchase, expensive to replace when mom/dad take it away, and much harder to conceal from teachers and parents. It's harder to swap flavors and such, too.

Really, the issue is that public officials and police don't care. It took 3-4 years for NYC to start doing something about the thousands of illegal smoke shops.

They're only going to be expensive if they're the "premium" option. If reusable is the only option, then these $5 basic reusable vapes I see in google will go into stores everywhere on the same shelves that used to have disposables. They're small too.

The overhead of a charging circuit and a refillable or removable chamber is not much.

I know people who are grown adults who still buy the disposable vapes. You save zero money of course since they charge more than the given amount when you don't have to get the battery. I have no clue why they do it. I think part of it is psychological, like "oh I don't use the vape much I won't get myself an actual battery," then three beers in they are running across the street to the smoke shop for a disposable.

They wouldn't want to harm the profits of their friends big tobacco and the tax the govt get from ciggies.

If they cared about health you'd be able to get Snus too

If it's about taxes why not impose a tax on ecigs?

Cigarettes are the only form that is relatively easy to tax as they come with a standard dose of non nicotine that needs to ship with them to be accepted. Places that have tried to limit the volume of disposables or ban all nicotine liquid have found that it easy to smuggle a huge amount of value in a small space and/or to add purer nicotine at the last moment.

The tax wouldn't need in the nicotine though but on the devices since that's what we are disposing. How high would the tax need to be to make up for the cost of disposal? Would it be high enough to make smuggling attractive? AFAIK products in Germany (and the EU?) already have a recycling tax built-in for things like plastic packaging and it seems to work. Would this tax need to be that much higher to the point that smuggling is encouraged?

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