There are a number of reasons why it’s difficult to stomach the claim that New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie is concerned about “public health”. His newest proposal for a pricey new excise tax on e-cigs is just one of them.

In 2010, Christie slashed $7.5 million — virtually all of the state’s investment — in smoking prevention and cessation support from the state’s “Comprehensive Tobacco Control Program”. As a result, the American Lung Association (ALA) now ranks NJ as 50th in the nation on this issue, recently noting, they are “the only state in the country to provide no state funding” for such programs.

Christie’s gutting of the state’s once-robust program has resulted in an “F” grade from the ALA on both “Tobacco Prevention” and “Cessation Coverage”, leading them to write: “This lack of funding to help tobacco users quit is a stark contradiction with New Jersey’s high tax rate of $2.70 per pack generating over $700 million each year in revenues.”

Thus, it’s all the more absurd to hear the “fiscally conservative” Christie administration now calling for a massive new “sin tax” on e-cigarettes, which are known to be a far safer alternative to smoking, since “vaping” includes none of the deadly toxins, such as tar and carbon monoxide, found in combustible tobacco.

But “conservative” hypocrisy aside, what makes Christie’s new tax and spend plan even more absurd is that his state Treasurer is now claiming their “main concern is public health.”

Really? The NJ Star-Ledger editorial board — which endorsed Christie’s re-election last year (though they came to regret it after Christie’s “BridgeGate” scandal emerged) — ain’t buying it…

In an editorial today, the board blasted Christie and his administration’s purported reasons for taxing e-cigs at the same rate as deadly cigarettes…

I’ve spent no small amount of time plowing through all manner of scientific studies in relation to e-cigs over the past year or so (since quitting my own decades-long habit overnight, thanks to the public health miracle of vaping!) and I’ve noted on the pages of late that the reporting in the mainstream corporate media has been largely terrible on this issue to date. See this absurdity from the New York Times in late March, by way of just one example.

But the Star-Ledger’s editorial has it mostly right here. (The one exception being their claim that e-cigs “can be less addictive than cigarettes.” I’m not sure where that data point comes from, and I’d be surprised if that was the case for all but those who choose to vape e-liquid containing 0% nicotine.)

Making it more difficult — or, in this case, more expensive — for smokers to quit smoking with the use of e-cigs is a deadly idea, as I’ve noted on a number of recent occasions, such as last month when the L.A. City Council shamefully voted unanimously to ban their use in public spaces, as if they were cigarettes, or as the Minnesota state legislature has recently been considering a similar deadly ban.

The former president of the American Lung Association has called such bans on e-cigs “misguided” and “a public health disservice.”

So the Star-Ledger editorial’s conclusion, then, seems right on the money: