Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. ESTES. Madam Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 2339.

I want to be clear from the outset, we need to find ways to keep vaping and tobacco products out of the hands of children and teenagers, including legal products that contain nicotine, as well as the black market products that contain THC and which have contributed to an alarming number of health concerns and deaths, including two in my home State of Kansas.

In recent months, these deaths have rightly attracted national attention and scrutiny, but the bill before us today is not the right solution to address this troubling situation.

Instead of following regular order, the tax title of this legislation did not have a hearing prior to markup in the Ways and Means Committee. I believe our constituents deserve to know about the impacts of vaping and the direct causes of recent deaths before we consider a $10 billion tax hike.

In addition, the substance of this legislation is technically flawed. While the bill is titled the ``Protecting American Lungs and Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic Act,'' it does nothing to address youth access to tobacco.

Congress has already raised the legal age of tobacco and nicotine consumption to 21 in December of last year. Because of this action, it seems that the only purpose of this legislation is to eliminate choice of millions of law-abiding adults.

The tax chapter of this legislation defines ``taxable nicotine,'' not vaping. This targets other legal nicotine products that are unrelated to vaping. A better solution would have been to use the FDA's definition of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems, or ENDS.

Additionally, this legislation taxes nicotine on the basis of weight. It would have been more appropriate and technically easier to tax vaping on the basis of milliliters, just as Kansas has done, as vaping products are sold as liquids.

Instead of targeting black market products, the bill levies a nearly $10 billion tax on American consumers of these legal products, which medical journals have found to be 95 percent safer than cigarettes.

This nicotine tax does not reflect the harm of vapor products related to traditional tobacco products. Instead it taxes vaping at a higher level per unit than traditional combustible tobacco products, which may encourage adults to transition back to cigarettes.

Both the CDC and the FDA have acknowledged that the outbreak of lung illnesses and deaths are mostly attributable to illicit marijuana and THC in vaping, which are not addressed at all in this bill.

The bill appears to be primarily a massive money grab and another step towards an outright tobacco ban rather than a solution to a very real health crisis.

I look forward to working to address the crisis, but I urge my colleagues today to vote against this bill.

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