Tennessee Senate Bill SB0893

Tennessee 2025-2026 Regular Session

• Introduced: 2/5/25

Caption

AN ACT to amend Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 67, Chapter 4, relative to heated tobacco products.

Summary

SB0893 amends Tennessee’s tobacco tax law to create a specific definition for “heated tobacco product” and to treat those products as cigarettes for tax purposes. The bill defines a heated tobacco product as a tobacco product that produces an inhalable aerosol by heating tobacco without combustion, or by heat from a combustion source that primarily heats rather than burns the tobacco. The bill also revises the cigarette tax statute so that heated tobacco products are taxed at a much lower rate than ordinary cigarettes. Under the bill, the general cigarette tax remains 3 cents per cigarette, with an additional 0.1 cent tax and a small enforcement and administration fee, but cigarettes that are heated tobacco products would instead be taxed at 0.15 cent per cigarette and would not be subject to the standard cigarette tax rate in subsection (a).

Impact

The bill would amend Tennessee Code Annotated Title 67, Chapter 4, by expanding the statutory definition of cigarette to include heated tobacco products while simultaneously creating a separate, lower tax rate for those products. This would affect tobacco dealers, distributors, and retailers by changing how certain products are classified and taxed, and it would require the Department of Revenue to administer a distinct tax treatment for heated tobacco products. The bill does not address smokeless nicotine products, which remain excluded from the cigarette definition.

Sentiment

No committee transcripts or recorded votes were provided, so there is no direct evidence of debate or formal support/opposition in the available materials. Based on the text alone, the bill appears to be a technical tax classification measure rather than a broad policy change, with its main effect being to establish a specific tax category for heated tobacco products.

Contention

The principal point of contention likely concerns the tax treatment of heated tobacco products: the bill classifies them as cigarettes but imposes a substantially lower per-cigarette tax rate than conventional cigarettes. That structure could draw differing views from public health advocates, who may object to any preferential treatment for tobacco products, and from industry or retailers, who may favor the clearer classification and lower tax burden. No specific opposing or supporting lawmakers, agencies, or stakeholder groups are identified in the provided record.