Do you vape?

Did you know that 60% of New York's cigarette sales are bootlegged in from states like North Carolina, because New York taxes cigarettes $4.35 per pack - plus New York City adds another $1.50, while North Carolina taxes the same pack only 45 cents? That's just one of the things I learned from reading George Will's column in the Washington Post.

Here is another fact I learned from reading the same column:

King James might have been less censorious about “vaping,” which almost certainly is less harmful than inhaling chemicals produced by the combustion of tobacco. Users of e-cigarettes inhale vapors from electronic sticks containing a liquid with nicotine, which is addictive and perhaps particularly unhealthy for adolescent brains. Between 2013 and 2014 the use of e-cigarettes by middle and high school students tripled, and now it exceeds that cohort’s use of traditional cigarettes.

E-cigarettes, sometimes flavored to tempt the immature (“Unicorn Puke,” “Stoned Smurf,” “German Chocolate Beefcake”), might be “gateway drugs,” leading to tobacco cigarettes. Currently, however, e-cigarettes often are substitutes for them. So, prepare for regulations combining high-mindedness and low cunning.

States addicted to tobacco taxes need a large and renewable supply of smokers, so they wince whenever an e-cigarette displaces a traditional cigarette.

Read more here.