A couple weeks ago, I walked into a convenience store to buy gas and a package of Zyn, a brand of nicotine pouches, a popular harm-reduction product people use to quit smoking or using smokeless tobacco.

I was shocked when my $20 in gas and two cans of Zyn came out to $38 and change, instead of the normal $30. Surely, I thought, the clerk had made a mistake.

Nope. Everything was accurate. Instead of Zyn costing between $5 and $5.50 per can, depending on the retailer, the price had shot up to $8.49 overnight. What gives?

Tens of thousands of Mainers like me experienced this unpleasant reality in August, when a new law that changed the legal definition of tobacco took effect in Maine. Mainers are now being punished financially for using less harmful products that, while still not good for you, are “unquestionably safer” than cigarettes and dip.

This is backward public health policy – and regressive tax policy – that should be fixed immediately when lawmakers return to Augusta in 2025.

To understand how we got to a place where Zyn costs $8.49 per can, we need to go back in time to 2019. Despite Gov. Janet Mills’ promises not to raise taxes on Mainers in her first budget cycle, she and the Democratic-led Legislature did in fact raise taxes on Mainers during this period.

This tax increase came on tobacco products, otherwise known as “sin taxes,” which are regressive and disproportionately hurt those who struggle to make ends meet. The law brought the tobacco tax on all tobacco products in line with the 43% tax on the wholesale price of cigarettes.

As a result, the price of tobacco products other than cigarettes – like cigars, loose leaf tobacco and smokeless tobacco – shot up by 43% overnight back in 2019.

At this time, the 43% tax increase applied only to tobacco products – defined as products that contain tobacco – and a monetary incentive existed for people like me to stop using products like dip and switch to less harmful alternatives like Zyn. That’s exactly what I did. On July 5, 2021, I vowed to never dip again, in addition to a number of other health changes I made in my life. Since that day, I haven’t dipped. The reason why is because of Zyn.

Fast forward to the most recent legislative session, where Sen. Nicole Grohoski (D-Hancock) sponsored L.D. 2028, which became law this year without the governor’s signature.

This law changes the legal definition of tobacco to any product that contains nicotine. Because Zyns are little pouches of nicotine salt, the 43% tax increase on tobacco products from 2019 now applies to products like Zyn, which contain no tobacco whatsoever.

This change is beyond misguided. Every time an individual switches from a more harmful product to a less harmful one like I did, we should consider it a health policy victory. If we want to reduce the devastating health effects and outcomes of smoking and the use of other harmful tobacco products, we must incentivize people to use less harmful ones on the path to quitting entirely.

That pathway used to exist in Maine. Nicotine products that do not contain tobacco previously cost less than traditional tobacco products before L.D. 2028 took effect. There was a financial incentive to use less harmful products.

But because of Sen. Grohoski’s efforts, that pathway is gone in Maine. There is no longer an incentive to make a smarter health decision by using harm reduction products.

Harm reduction saves lives, plain and simple. New research from the American Consumer Institute shows that nearly 300,000 fewer smoking-related deaths would occur annually in the United States if e-cigarettes replaced traditional smoking nationwide. This would have a tremendous, positive impact on families and our health care system as a whole.

When lawmakers return to Augusta next year, they should right this wrong immediately. L.D. 2028 is bad tax policy and even worse health policy. Its enactment will result in more smoking-related deaths in Maine, and our state and the health of its people are worse off for it.