(Radio Iowa) – Senate Majority Leader Mike Klimesh (KLEH-mish) says he’ll have a conversation with his fellow Republicans about whether vaping products — the liquid pods or cartridges used in e-cigarettes — should be taxed in Iowa, just like cigarettes.

That would hurt retailers in Iowa’s border areas, Klimesh says, as Iowans who vape might start going to a neighboring state to buy their supplies. Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois all tax vaping products. South Dakota and Missouri don’t. Klimesh is a former smoker who says he’s tried to wean himself off nicotine for the past 20 years and he introduced a bill this past year that would have taxed vaping liquid as well as nicotine pouches which are wedged inside a person’s bottom lip like smokeless tobacco.

This fall, Senate Republicans chose Klimesh to be their new leader and he says that means he has a different role in the lawmaking process.

According to the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, the cigarette smoking rate among Iowa adults has dropped to five-point-six percent, but the use of e-cigarettes continues to rise — with 23-and-a-half percent of 18 and 24 year olds vaping regularly.