Garett: 00:29

Welcome to the deeper you go, the weirder it gets. I'm your host, Garett Renon. In this episode, we're going to talk about the 95% tax Washington state rolled out on nicotine products. The tax includes products like nicotine pouches, cigars, vapes, and chewing tobacco, but not cigarettes, Which is weird, right? Because not all nicotine containing products are created equal.

Garett: 00:58

Not to mention that out of all the nicotine products available on the market, cigarettes might be the most unhealthy and most addicting. Maybe. I don't know that for sure, but what I do know is that cigarettes are a chemical shitstorm that are made with bad intentions. So why do they get a pass when it comes to this outrageous tax hike? Before we get into that, I wanna take a moment to thank all of you for listening.

Garett: 01:27

And as you know, this show runs on your support. So if you were enjoying it, please share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review. Get some podcast gear, sign up for the newsletter, grab a copy of the unplugged journal, or pick up some organic pine pollen or elysian tallow. And finally, I want to say, as of recording this episode, we are now thirteen days into 2026. And I wanna ask you something.

Garett: 01:59

Has anything changed? Are you consistently implementing the actions, habits, and mindsets required to reach your goals? If you are, I want to genuinely congratulate you. You are doing the hard work, and I encourage you to keep going, especially when the motivation starts to fade because that's when discipline matters most. And if you are not, then the time and if you are not, then it's time to get moving.

Garett: 02:28

See, we have a finite amount of time on this planet, in this body, in this life. And if you want to become better, if you want to do more, have more, and be more, you don't get there by waiting. You get there by taking action. See, it's interesting because society has quietly convinced us that time is on our side, that we can delay the things that would make us stronger, that we can start tomorrow or next month or once work slows down or once finances improve. But the truth is, there is never a perfect time.

Garett: 03:07

I can't tell you what the future looks like, but I can tell you this. Nothing changes if nothing changes. And if you are waiting for the timing to feel right, you will be waiting forever. There will always be reasons not to start, but only those who jump get rewarded. And if you want support on that journey, I built a program specifically for this moment.

Garett: 03:34

On 01/25/2026, I'm starting the next ninety day Ayumetto initiation. And this isn't just a program. It's a modern rite of passage designed to strip away distraction, rebuild discipline, and help you install habits and behaviors that actually last. And the investment is a $150. Yes.

Garett: 04:00

You missed the early bird pricing because you hesitated, but there is still time to step up. But but don't make the mistake of hesitating again. See, ninety days from now, you're either going to be glad you took action or you'll be wondering what might have been. If you want more details, message me directly. All the links are in the show notes, and let's get on with the episode.

Garett: 04:27

So one thing that happened last week on 01/01/2026 is that Washington state implemented a 95% tax on nicotine containing products. When you look into this, it gets extremely weird. So according to the new tax law, this 95% tax is implemented on cigars, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco, e cigarettes and vaping products, synthetic nicotine pouches, and disposable vapor products. Now one of the reasons this is weird, aside from the fact that it's a 95% tax, which is just outrageous, where are these taxes going? If you've been paying attention to anything over the last twenty, thirty years, you know that whether it's on the state side or the federal side, we are completely inefficient with taxes.

Garett: 05:24

So this is just another way to take money from the people and put it towards God knows what. Right? At least in Washington state, the roads are bad, the schools are bad, the infrastructure is crumbling. We have more homeless people than we've ever had before. Drug use open air drug use is out of control.

Garett: 05:47

So where are our taxes going? But aside from that, the 95% tax does not apply to cigarettes, which is crazy because cigarettes are probably the most unhealthy thing out of all those things listed. Cigarettes are essentially a chemical shitstorm containing all kinds of carcinogenic compounds. And it gets even weirder when you realize that nicotine actually has a lot of benefits.

Tom Segura: 06:22

It's on cigarettes. Are they bad for real?

Andrew Huberman: 06:23

Here's what's crazy. Nicotine is neuroprotective. Nicotine is great for us. Not that everyone should take it, but it increases acetylcholine and dopamine and epinephrine, leads to heightened focus, improved memory, and can offset neurodegeneration in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Tom Segura: 06:38

Yes. We basically have this blurb that says professor Huberman says smoking cigarettes is good for you?

Andrew Huberman: 06:44

No. Because smoking cigarettes Okay. Is bad because it's carcinogenic. Oh. There are about a thousand carcinogens in cigarettes.

Andrew Huberman: 06:50

Vaping is bad because of the chemicals that you're inhaling with it.

Garett: 06:53

See, what he said here what he said there is is correct that just because nicotine has a lot of benefits doesn't necessarily mean you should smoke and you and you definitely shouldn't vape. But there's another side to all of this, which is that what I've learned from my own plant medicine journey is that tobacco is a very powerful plant medicine. And in the shippable ayahuasca world, most people know that ayahuasca is considered the grandmother. Well, tobacco is considered the grandfather. So they pair very well in ceremony, and many indigenous cultures all around the world highly regard tobacco as a powerful plant spirit.

Garett: 07:40

So tobacco alone, I believe, is extremely healthy for you. Now with that being said, the dose makes the poison, and also the intention behind why you're smoking it plays a huge role. Like, when I personally use tobacco, I almost always use it with a pipe. It's loose leaf tobacco, Mopacho from the Amazon jungle, and I always smoke it with intention, and I do not inhale it. In fact, a almost a daily ritual is before I leave the house, I pray into my pipe, and I blow some Lapacho on me as a way of giving myself some energetic protection as I venture off into the world.

Garett: 08:25

And then when I come back home, I will then use the energy of the Mapacho smoke to then cleanse any energies that I picked up and then center myself. And another thing I wanted to bring up is the the difference in the tax structure for some of the tobacco or nicotine products in Washington state. So if you look at this chart, as mentioned, the cigarettes do not apply to this 95% tax, making the effective tax rate for cigarettes at 38%. So you've got almost a 60 difference in the amount of taxes being applied to cigarettes versus other nicotine and tobacco products. So what's going on here?

Garett: 09:11

If this was under the guise of of safety, of trying to protect you from evil tobacco or evil nicotine, then cigarettes should also have a 95 tax rate. Anything else doesn't make sense, and anything else just makes my conspiratorial mind turn on. And one thing we know for sure is that the tobacco lobby or I should say the cigarette lobby is extremely powerful. See, based on that tax structure, they are clearly guiding you towards cigarettes, making cigarettes cheaper and easier to come by. Now, again, I wanna be clear.

Garett: 09:55

I definitely do not encourage anybody smoking cigarettes. And I think that the vapes are just as bad, if not worse. And even the nicotine patches, I know that people are very quickly becoming addicted to them. And even though nicotine is beneficial in small doses and has a lot of beneficial effects, one of the problems that I see with nicotine versus tobacco, especially coming from the plant medicine side of things, is that tobacco is the whole plant. And when you smoke tobacco, pure, clean tobacco with intention, I not only believe that that can be healthy, I also think that energetically, it can be very good for you because you're taking in the whole plant, and you are communing with the spirit of tobacco.

Garett: 10:53

And I think that there's a problem when it comes to any plant substance when you just extract the active ingredient. So while nicotine can be good for you, when you just extract the nicotine component while removing the spirit of the plant and other plant material that's supposed to work synergistically with the nicotine, when you remove all that and you just take in the active compound, I don't think that's good. You know, this is the same thing that happened with marijuana. See, if you know anything about marijuana or cannabis is that there is a lot of cannabinoids. And I'm I'm not an expert at it, so I don't know how many, but there's upwards of 10 to a 100, I think, of different cannabinoids.

Garett: 11:46

And THC is the most popular cannabinoid with CBD being the second most popular, and there's other ones like CBN. And what I learned about cannabis is that it's supposed to look like a spectrum. Think of it like as a an equalizer on a d on a DJ setup where you have your base and your treble and your mids and your highs and your lows. Well, you're supposed to have a certain percentage of THC and a certain percentage of CBD and a certain percentage of CBN. But what's happened with the cannabis industry is because THC is the fun cannabinoid, it's the cannabinoid that gets you high, You now find strains of marijuana that have upwards of 95 to 98% THC and then point zero one, point zero five of all the other cannabinoids.

Garett: 12:41

And what has happened is you have a plant that is completely unbalanced, which is why it is no longer your grandfather's weed. And it's why when people consume cannabis, paranoia is shooting through the roof. Now look, I I still believe that cannabis can be a beautiful plant medicine, but we are doing ourselves a disservice when we are extracting certain components or enhancing certain components while rejecting other components. And so that's all I'm saying. So I believe that the same thing is true when you remove the nicotine from tobacco.

Garett: 13:21

So anyway, I just thought that this was interesting and I wanted to make a quick video about this. So let me know what you think. Are you in favor of this 95% tax structure on nicotine and tobacco products? Are you in favor of the government taxing quote, unquote, bad or unhealthy products? You know, I myself, I don't I don't know.

Garett: 13:46

Right? I'm kind of more along the lines of freedom and stop taxing me because we already pay way too much in taxes and let me make my own decisions because I'm smart enough to know what is good for me and what is bad for me. But on the other hand, okay, if you want to protect us and you wanna tax things at a higher structure, well, where does the line get drawn? Right? There are a lot of unhealthy products that you can go to the store right now and do not have any extra taxes added to them.

Garett: 14:19

So in general, I'm in favor of of less government and less regulation and more freedom. And I'm also a fan of the holistic approach to plant medicine and substances. And when it comes to tobacco, I believe that tobacco should be used with intention and purpose, and you should smoke it and use it in its most natural form as you possibly can. Let me know what you think. See you on the other side.