Here is the letter that I penned to my Congressman:

I am writing to in opposition to H.R.5376 - Build Back Better Act, as it applies to a proposed tax on extracted and synthetic nicotine products. As a physician, you are keenly aware of the damage to society that cigarette smoking has caused. As a physician you should also be aware of the many hundreds of thousands of Californians, myself included, who have kicked the cigarette habit by switching to vaping and vaporized nicotine products. While nothing is 100% safe, I hope that you would agree that vaping represents a fundamental shift away from inhaling burning leaves in order to consume nicotine, a substance that, in small quantities, has proven to be essentially benign to adult users, hence its approval in a variety of foodstuffs, medications, and cosmetics. Raising the tax on nicotine products that are not combustible i.e. cigarettes, cigars, and pipe tobacco, is unjust, as vaping nicotine will help save countless of American lives.

On a personal note, I was a pack a day smoker for 20 years. My mother died of lung cancer at age 49 due to smoking. In 2011 I decided to try vaping as I knew the danger inherent in cigarette smoking. I started out vaping 24mg nicotine liquid. Through the years I have weaned myself down to 1.5mg of nicotine. The truth is that I am an adult, and I enjoy vaping. Exorbitant taxing of vaping nicotine will not prevent under age use as they will simply return to smoking cigarettes. Any clear minded adult can see that for themselves, and I hope that that includes you, Dr. Ruiz. Please vote no on H.R. 5376 unless, and until, the proposed increased taxation of non-cigarette nicotine is removed from the bill.

Yeah I tried. I got form letter responses from my Wyoming state reps and senators and they devoted ONE sentence to that and spent the rest of the letter bitching and whining about everything else instead.

The absolute snakes, can't say I'm surprised.

Sending letters, emails or doing petitions won't stop anything. It's a waste of time

I think its atrocious they're trying to sneak that into the funding bill, but politicians are going to act like politicians. Assuming like me you go through about 240 mils of juice a month It's a roughly $19.60 increase in cost per month.

This means DIY would no longer be cheaper than buying Juice. At least for me since I usually get cheapy juice off Bulk sites when I buy juice. However, considering we can't get those mailed to us anymore and most shops will charge double the online prices.....

Personally, as much as I hate this if it means that Nicotine is still available to buy and get a hold of it would be a small price to pay compared to having to get shitty juice with 150% markups from B&Ms that's if there will be any juice available in the next year or two form B&Ms. Either way this tax sucks and its like having to choose between a shit sandwich and shit sandwich.

Also before anyone says anything I know there are other things in play that would stop regular consumers from being able to buy Nicotine this whole situation sucks.

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I believe this add on to the giant bill was brought forward by someone in Arizona.

Here is the tax breakdown. https://www.atr.org/what-democrat-vape-tax-increase-will-actually-mean-vapers?amp

It's a good damn thing the D's lost Virginia, and with it, the chances of BBB passing have gone to pretty much zero. Aside from that, however, I wonder how many of the 535 Members even know these 2 pages out of 5,000 exist?

And finally, do we know, or is there any way to find out which individual Member of Congress inserted this language, hidden like a snake in the leaves of this 5,000 page bill (which by itself is why if I was in Congress, any 5,000 page bills to hit my desk would be DOA, even if I THINK it's full of my own pet projects.)? I'd bet it's the same motherfucker who did the same with the PACT act hidden in a 5,000 page Covid bill.