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Senate Appropriations amends tobacco bill to remove new appropriations and investigator, reports measure without recommendation
Summary
The Senate Appropriations Committee on March 20 amended S198 — a broad rewrite of tobacco and nicotine laws — removing proposed redirection of licensing and penalty revenue and deleting a proposed investigator position and appropriation before reporting the bill to the floor without recommendation.
The Senate Committee on Appropriations amended and reported S198 — described repeatedly in the hearing as “the tobacco bill” — after stripping language that would have redirected licensing, penalty and settlement revenues into a tobacco trust fund and deleting a proposed investigator position funded in the short term from the tobacco litigation settlement fund.
Legislative counsel summarized the bill for the committee, saying it reorganizes tobacco statutes, broadens the statutory definition of “tobacco substitute” to include nicotine pouches and similar products, and shifts wholesale licensing authority from the Department of Taxes to the Department of Liquor and Lottery. The bill originally included higher retail licensing fees and a sequence of escalated civil penalties and license suspensions for…
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