This bill amends and recodifies Washington’s taxes and regulatory scheme for cigarettes, vapor products, and other products containing nicotine. It replaces many references to “tobacco” with “nicotine” products, imposes a tax on nicotine products at a rate of 95 percent of the taxable sales price (amending chapter 82.26 RCW), and adds a new per-cigarette tax of $0.09875 in chapter 82.24 RCW in addition to existing cigarette taxes. The bill creates new sections, recodifies RCW 82.25.015 into chapter 82.26, and repeals numerous sections in chapter 82.25. The bill makes broad procedural and enforcement changes: it requires distributor and retailer licensing with background checks and fees, detailed invoice and five-year record retention requirements, inspection authority for department and board agents during usual business hours without a warrant, and limits on who may transport nicotine products. It establishes delivery-sale licensure and strict ageand identity-verification procedures for mail‑ and internet‑ordered vapor products, prescribes criminal and civil penalties (including class C felony exposure and fines up to $5,000 for certain knowing delivery-sale violations), authorizes license suspension and revocation (first offense at least 30 business days; later offenses at least 90 days up to 12 months; revocation for willful/persistent violations), and provides seizure and forfeiture procedures for unauthorized sales or transport. The liquor and cannabis board is given expanded enforcement authority, including appointment of enforcement officers to enforce chapters 82.24 and 82.26, and public‑health sampling and injunction authority is established for products deemed injurious by the secretary of health or local health jurisdictions. The bill also prescribes revenue deposit and distribution rules for vapor-product tax receipts, directing portions to the Andy Hill cancer research endowment match transfer account and to a foundational public health services account up to specified annual thresholds ($10,000,000 and $20,000,000 respectively) with automatic CPI-based adjustments beginning January 1, 2029; excess revenue goes to the state general fund. It allows tribal consultations and potential renegotiation of tax compacts, and provides special exemptions for certain “preexisting inventories” taxed under prior law, though the bill text in the provided extracts contains differing preexisting‑inventory provisions and dates (including an exemption tied to inventories taxed before January 1, 2026 that expires July 1, 2027), and some definitions and provisions (including portions of the vapor‑product exclusions and several section texts) are incomplete or missing from the extracted material.

If enacted, the bill would sharply raise the cost of noncigarette nicotine products by imposing a tax equal to 95 percent of their taxable sales price and add a new per-cigarette tax of about ten cents per cigarette; those taxes are collected from the distributor, not the retail customer, and the first portions of vapor and cigarette tax revenue would be routed to specific health accounts (including up to $10 million a year to the Andy Hill cancer research match transfer account and $10 million to a youth prevention account) with the rest going to the state general fund and other public health accounts subject to inflation adjustments starting in 2029. Distributors, retailers, manufacturers and delivery sellers will face tighter licensing, higher administrative costs, and recordkeeping and invoice-retention requirements, plus inspections, criminal background checks for license applicants, license fees ($650 plus per-location fees), and the risk of license suspension, revocation, product seizure, and forfeiture for violations. Businesses that ship vapor products by mail or online will have new procedural costs and risks from strict age and identity verification rules (third-party database checks, card verification, mailed or electronic certification for first-time buyers) and steep civil and criminal penalties for knowing violations; health and enforcement agencies (the Liquor and Cannabis Board, Department of Revenue, public health authorities, the attorney general, and law enforcement) gain broader powers to inspect, test products, suspend sales of products found to be injurious, and seek injunctions. The text leaves some implementation details to agency rulemaking and cross-references other statutes, and several definitions and sections are only partly shown here, so timing, some compliance specifics, and how tribal compacts or exempt tribal sales will operate in practice are uncertain from the extracted material.