Sometimes it can pay to be a bit selfish.
I fully intend to be selfish myself in my own way by stocking up on a sheet ton of nic base before they can slap a high tax on it and adding to my collection of robust mechs and rebuildables to try and stretch out my own, personal 'golden age' for as long as I can.
You won't be alone with that strategy. Maybe sooner rather than later on the nic stocks ... my one fear is that the Chancellor delivers a surprise budget line like "As of midnight tonight duty will be payable on pharma nicotine ... ", that'll cause panic buying. I don't intend to lay down 10 years of stock, particularly if the extra tax is only 10-20%, that wouldn't make financial sense. I don't see 3G hardware ever being a problem personally.
I don't object to paying VAT but I would object to paying a high percentage, tobacco products type sin tax. There would be little or no justification for a sin tax, other than replacing revenue lost from tobacco cigarettes. Given the main justification cited for tobacco tax is to try and curtail harm and the vastly reduced harm profile of vaping, to levy a similar level of tax on eliquid as tobacco cigarettes would be grossly unfair.
Couldn't agree more. There's already VAT on e-liquid and nic. They haven't worked out yet how to levy tax on e-cigs - whether on devices, on e-liquid or both ... it's completely counter-intuitive to the harm reduction strategy, I agree, but revenues are declining.
My prediction that licensed products will be given a medical classification is based on the fact that only big corporations will be able to afford the licensing. As we already know, this basically limits licensed products to vested interests with enough financial clout i.e. Big Pharma/Big tobacco. These corps are only concerned with generating profit and trying to cut out opposition. By using medical classification, they can exempt their products from 'sin tax', undercut non licensed products in retail price and still profiteer.
I think your prediction is sound. However, vaping is a consumer-led phenomenon and it's existing complexity suggests that it has nothing to fear from a split between approved and non-approved products. That just means more choice. Cigalike products are at a huge cost and performance disadvantage to gen 2 and gen 3 devices, their sales have already plateaued and will be fast declining. Re-normalisation is a failing strategy.
As you say, it will kind of suck for people who arrive late to the party and miss out on the 'golden age' before the market gets sewn up. Hopefully, somewhere between now then something will happen to screw things up for BP/BT. Maybe TW's legal challenge? Perhaps mass enlightenment from public health bodies and tobacco control? Being the cynic that I am though, I tend to think that profit will win out over people as so often seems to happen.
I don't think the market will get sewn up. I think the pro-vaping lobbyists are scaremongering, amplifying cynicism and pessimism with doom-laden predictions and worst-case interpretations of proposals. Their job is to polarise as they have apathy to counter and I'm not buying that fanaticism. Surveys, polls etc I do as many as I see, but letters to MPs, the BBC and the Daily Fail - nah, I'm not wasting my time with that.
Consumers need protecting, regulation is pretty much inevitable ... I see some well-intentioned stuff and increasingly I see evidence-based counters to the irrational, emotional and deliberately misleading BP/BT-backed statements and positions. The truth will out and it's only a matter of time before public perceptions are adjusted.
I'm still a happy vaper, cynicism is healthy and so is a positive outlook.
