First Juul, now Zyn: New York is punishing the generation that quit smoking

New York imposed a 75% tax on the wholesale price of alternative nicotine products, including pouches and gum, on Tuesday. Albany says it will protect younger residents from Big Tobacco’s predation. But ex-smokers are most affected: switching away from cigarettes is now pricier and less safe. Meanwhile, the black market for these products will boom.“Alternative nicotine products like Zyn have proliferated in corner stores across the state, threatening to hook New Yorkers on harmful, addictive substances,” Gov. Kathy Hochul’s (D-NY) office wrote in a press statement. The law, which subjects oral nicotine pouches, gum, and lozenges to the same tax treatment as traditional tobacco products, keeps “barriers in place to prevent youth usage.” Recommended Stories Young Americans increasingly prefer nicotine pouches as vape and cigarette use decline. Tucker Carlson and NELK, major internet personalities with large young male audiences, have both launched nicotine pouch products. Barstool founder Dave Portnoy offered exclusive nicotine advertising rights to Lucy, a nicotine products brand, in exchange for equity. Portnoy’s gamble paid off — Lucy’s sales grew tenfold after its partnership with the sports media company and a nationwide Zyn shortage. Alarmism around nicotine products, which are much safer than smoking, is misplaced. “Adults may be using nicotine pouches for harm reduction given that use is highest among those that have recently quit another tobacco product or e-cigarettes,” said Cristine Delnevo, director of the Rutgers Institute for Nicotine and Tobacco Studies. Her team of researchers analyzed data from the Census Bureau-administered 2022-23 Tobacco Use Supplement for a study of more than 110,000 Americans. About 13% of ex-smokers had ever used nicotine pouches, compared with just under 1% of adult nonsmokers.For Generation Z, Delnevo’s findings carry an added irony. Some young adults using the nicotine products New York now taxes at 75% could be the same high schoolers the government sought to protect when it banned Juul pods eight years ago.The federal government’s 2018 ban on flavored Juul pods left what Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) admitted in 2019 was “a demand void that countries like China are anxious to supply.” Unauthorized flavored disposable vapes amounted to about $2.4 billion in sales — or 35% of the e-cigarette market in convenience stores and supermarkets. That was a year after the federal government’s crackdown on Elf Bars in 2023 — a move for which the Senate minority leader was an early political spearhead.OPINION: ANTI-VAPING HYSTERIA KEEPS SMOKERS HOOKED. TRUMP’S FDA IS (FINALLY) EMBRACING REALITYResearchers in Washington, D.C., dug through trash to learn that 99.5% of the 2,000 vapes they collected were counterfeit. The city’s harsh vape regulations opened an eager black market. And yet, the District of Columbia still applied a 71% tax on the wholesale price of nonsmoking nicotine products. The result? The Consumer Choice Center notes that 350 new illegal products enter the D.C. market each month. Ex-smokers now choose between a pricier alternative or an unsafe, unregulated product.Consumer choice, not government, has better empowered young adults with alternatives to kick their smoking vices, almost a decade after the Juul ban fallout. Now, New York is treating an alternative whose long-term effects are not yet determined with the same ferocity as cigarettes. New York mustn’t restrict choice — especially a rational choice to replace dangerous habits — by consumers who aren’t the children or nonsmokers Albany claims it must protect.Daniel Idfresne (@danielidfresne) is a Young Voices senior contributor and incoming The Fund for American Studies journalism fellow at the Boston Globe. His work has appeared in the Washington Examiner, the New York Post, Reason, Newsweek, and RealClearPolitics. He has appeared on national television as a political commentator.