Targeting teen nicotine vaping, Gov. Jared Polis recently announced a late-session bill to ask Colorado voters to significantly raise taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products and impose taxes on nicotine vaping devices.

Legislation being sponsored by Rep. Yadira Caraveo and Sen. Rhonda Fields, both Democrats, would ask voters in November if Colorado's sales tax on cigarettes should increase from 84 cents to $2.59 a pack.

The national median in 2018 was $1.66 per pack, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

If approved by voters, nicotine vaping devices would be taxed at 62 percent of their wholesale price. So, too, would other tobacco products.

The tax hikes could generate more than $300 million a year for early childhood education, tobacco prevention and cessation programs, mental health and other services, the Democratic governor told a news conference.

“I am very excited,” Polis said, calling it “a moral imperative” to combat teen nicotine vaping.

E-cigarettes heat a nicotine solution into a vapor that's inhaled.

A recent Colorado government study suggests that 27 percent of minors regularly use the devices — one of the highest rates in the nation. Experts say vaping can lead to lifelong tobacco use, and that making smoking more expensive deters youth from taking up the habit and encourages smokers to quit.

The average cost of a pack of cigarettes in Colorado is $5.60, including taxes, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The proposed increase would bump that to about $8.19.

In 2016, Colorado voters defeated a proposal to triple the state cigarette tax. The tax was last raised in 2004.

Some 7 percent of Colorado minors and nearly 15 percent of adults smoked cigarettes in 2017, according to the state Department of Public Health and Environment. The percentage of adult tobacco users has declined from 20 percent in 2004.

Democrats who control the Legislature are certain to pass the initiative before the 2019 session ends May 3.

Polis, a first-term governor, already has signed into law a bill allowing local municipalities to impose their own taxes and regulations on tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, without losing their shares of the state's tobacco tax.

Another bill to limit where e-cigarettes can be used in an effort to combat rising teen use of nicotine-containing vaping devices is pending in the Senate. The bill would add electronic cigarettes and other vaping devices to the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act, which restricts tobacco use at the workplace and in many public spaces.