A new proposal introduced in the Grand Canyon State aims to regulate electronic cigarettes and vaping devices as tobacco products to address the increased number of young people using these products.

Since their introduction in 2007, e-cigarettes and vaping devices have been subject to numerous local, state, and federal regulations, taxes, and even bans.

The same public health groups that first identified the link between cancer and smoking cigarettes have found e-cigarettes to be substantially less harmful than combustible tobacco cigarettes.

• In 2015, Public Health England found e-cigarette use to be “95% safer than smoking.”

• The Royal College of Physicians came to the same conclusion in 2016, stating hazards from e-cigarettes were “unlikely to exceed 5% of the harm from smoking tobacco,” and these products have created “a massive opportunity for consumer – as well as healthcare – led revolution in the way nicotine is used in society.”

• In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report that found “substantial evidence that completely switching from regular use of combustible cigarettes to e-cigarettes results in reduced short-term adverse health outcomes in several organ systems.”

The use of vapor products could save Arizonans money. A 2015 analysis found Medicaid savings could have amounted to $48 billion in 2012 if e-cigarettes had been adopted in place of combustible tobacco cigarettes by all Medicaid recipients who currently smoke.

Arizona currently use little funding from existing tobacco settlements and taxes on education and tobacco control efforts.

• In 2018, the state “received $437.5 million in tobacco settlement payments and taxes.” In the same year, Arizona spent “$17.8 million in state funds to tobacco prevention,” or “27.6 percent of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) annual spending target.”

• In fiscal year 2019, Arizona will spend even less on tobacco control programs ($17.3 million, or 26.9 percent of CDC’s target spending).

Of the additional taxes that have been levied on tobacco products in 1994 and 2002, only 23 percent and 5 percent of additional tax revenue is dispersed into the Health Education Account, which “provides funding for education and prevention programs about tobacco use and chronic disease.”

The majority of the funding from the increased cigarette tax goes to the Medically Needy Account and the Proposition 204 Protection Account, which provides “funding for Medicaid services.”