There's a standard rule of economics that states, "What you tax, you get less of. What you subsidize, you get more of." That statement is usually applied to matters of enterprise, welfare and so on. But it also applies to products.

Case in point: There's a tobacco-based product that has been helping a lot of people quit smoking. It's called a tobacco pouch, and it's great for people transitioning from smoker to non-smoker.

I think I'd argue that even using the pouches to get that little nicotine buzz without all of the tars and other crud that come with typically low-grade tobaccos used in cigarettes is still a step in the right direction. The FDA agrees:

During the meeting this month, FDA officials said that in general nicotine pouches were lower risk, exposing users to fewer toxic chemicals than other categories of nicotine products, and had so far not driven significant youth use.

Reuters briefed Mary Hrywna - an associate professor at Rutgers University, who has studied nicotine pouches - on the contents of the FDA discussions.

She said clearing new nicotine products for faster market launch could expand the availability of less harmful options for smokers. Whether it encourages them to switch is, however, another issue, she said.

Even if it doesn't encourage them to switch, then, the best information we have on these things is that they are less harmful than smoking. (Full disclosure: I enjoy the occasional cigar, perhaps 2-3 per month, which my doctor assures me she isn't even worried about at that rate.)

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New York Has the Nation's Highest Tobacco Taxes - So, of Course, They Have the Most Smuggling

So this may be a valuable tool for people who are trying to quit smoking, and it may serve as a less-harmful alternative to smoking at the very least. Which may be why Illinois just decided to tax tobacco pouches.

The Illinois Department of Revenue defines "tobacco products" in part as:

• other kinds and forms of tobacco, prepared in such manner as to be suitable for chewing or smoking in a pipe or otherwise, or both for chewing and smoking or for inhalation, absorption, or ingesting by any other means; but does not include cigarettes as defined in Section 1 of the Cigarette Tax Act or tobacco purchased for the manufacture of cigarettes by cigarette distributors and manufacturers defined in the Cigarette Tax Act and persons who make, manufacture, or fabricate cigarettes as a part of a Correctional Industries program for sale to residents incarcerated in penal institutions or resident patients of a State operated mental health facility.

Note: Words in bold font above have been added to the current definition of tobacco products.

Tobacco pouches are meant to be absorbed. They are, in effect, "dip" or snuff, in which nicotine is absorbed through the oral mucosa, contained in, well, a pouch.

There is essentially no logic in this. None. But then, there's no logic in sin taxes in general, be they for tobacco, alcohol, or anything else. These are legal products; it is not the role of the government to protect people from the consequences of their bad decisions, nor is it the role of the government to prevent people from having those choices. 

And, of course, every such product on which any level of government levies such a tax invites a black market. You would think that if any state would understand this lesson of Prohibition, it would be Illinois, but that evidently isn't the case. And in this instance, it's even worse, as the state of Illinois is disincentivizing a product that may be used to help them quit another product that the state is trying to disincentivize.

It's stupid all the way down.

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