Re your post 31:
Thanks for the great explanation.
If this catches on, not only does tax revenue go down: so does bulk cigarette consumption, and so does the value of the tobacco bond settlements. It will take time, but as you point out, there’s a lot of revenue at stake.
It’s hard to believe that some of the tobacco companies pioneered this once you realize how cheap the nicotine ingredient is.
The amount of nicotine in a real tobacco cigarette comes to about 24 milligrams. When a cigarette is burnt, about 23 milligrams of that nicotine goes up in smoke and the smoker only inhales the remaining 1mg remaining.
Therefore, distilling eCig juice from the amount of tobacco used in a carton of real cigarettes can last twenty four times longer: 24:1, or maybe double that. That's lots and lots of eCig fluid.
So, a thimble-sized bottle of eCigarette fluid can contain more nicotine that an eCig user needs . Whenever a smoker wants a cigarette, one teeny drop into an eCig will be enough. You can buy 5mg thimble-sized bottles of eCig juice over the Internet for just a couple bucks.
... and for anyone wondering, the modern eCig feels exactly like smoking a real cigarette -- only there's no lingering smoke (it's water vapor), no burnt tobacco smell, and the eCig fluid can even be had in hundreds of flavors.
The economic savings is enormous on eCigs. Damn near free, compared to real tobacco cigs that have taxes so high that an average "pack-a-day" smoker may spend $3000-$6000 a year on cigarettes. Multiply that by all the smokers in America and you're talking hundreds of billions of dollars.
That's the money that liberal legislators are missing out on, and that's just the tax revenue factor: The health benefits that come from not smoking tobacco cigarettes any longer is amazing. 24 hours after switching to eCigarettes, people aren't coughing any more. A few weeks later, and there's no more black tar junk being spit up any more. Your full sense of taste comes back around this time. Long term eCig users are reporting that they have lung capacity and circulation like they haven't had since before they started smoking those damned tobacco cigarettes, even if they've been smoking for fifty years. You start getting healthier immediately. Read the eCig forums, and the testimonials are astounding: eCigs are a God-send, and so many people are quitting nicotine forever.
eCigarettes are saving people's lives and also saving them boatloads of cash. The first thing you notice is all the money that's not being spent on cartons of cigarettes any more.
Anyone out there still smoking real tobacco cigarettes needs to switch to an electronic cigarette right this flippin' minute, and I ain't kidding.