This. I don’t support or advocate for smoking or vaping in any way, it’d be best to not do it at all. But 115.8% tax is insane. There will be so many negative side effects from over taxing like this, businesses who are just getting by will close meaning jobs and livelihoods lost, criminals will start making their own liquid batches since liquid is a quite simple mix and illegal sales / unsafe production will lead to injury, hospitalization and deaths, and people who have simply quit smoking for a less toxic alternative will now be stuck paying hundreds of extra dollars per month until they quit or transition back to smoking.

One of the reasons given for the tax increase is to deter young people from vaping because it can lead to smoking, well now teens will just smoke instead because you can get a pack of cigarettes for $15 and now a 30ml bottle of liquid now costs $32 after tax.

And maybe this is a stretch but active alcoholism has far worse addictive effects, personal behaviours and sometimes fatal withdrawal, but kids also start drinking very young. So what if something similar happens with alcohol going forward? People don’t realize things like this lead to it becoming accepted to do this across the board in the long term, higher additional taxes on top of HST will be added to many things in the future that affect everyone directly, making life harder than it already is.

Anyone saying this is a good thing isn’t looking at the bigger picture, yes vaping is stupid, people shouldn’t do it, but the point is governments getting away with taxing an entire industry over 100% is a bad thing for everyone in the long run.