MCLEAN, VA – While the FDA continues to assess how it will regulate electronic cigarettes, states are moving ahead with their own agendas, many of them looking to tax the vaping devices, USA Today reports.

"States are scrambling to figure out how to deal with this," said Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine. "It's going to be fought out in 50 states; it's going to be fought out in one jurisdiction after another."

While the FDA was expected to release a ruling last month, it was delayed by the government shutdown and is still pending.

As a result, states and local governments have created a patchwork of their own rules, with more than half the states banning the sale of e-cigarettes to minors. At least four states have lumped the products in with tobacco under indoor smoking bans, even with limited evidence that second-hand vapor smoke is harmful.

With state governments receiving declining revenue from traditional tobacco taxes and states still struggling economically, taxing e-cigarettes is “likely to get the most attention from state lawmakers in 2014,” USA Today said.

Currently, only Minnesota has a specific tax policy for e-cigarettes, subjecting them to a 95% tax that is tacked onto the wholesale cost of the product. At least 30 other states are considering e-cigarette taxes for 2014.

"I will be watching to see if more proposals like Minnesota are replicated in the states," said Scott Drenkard of the Tax Foundation, an anti-tax research group, "But I hope they are not."

Tax experts maintain there’s little rationale for taxing e-cigarettes like traditional cigarettes — except for raising revenue. They note that tobacco is taxed because of its harmful health consequences, while there’s little research supporting similar effects from e-cigarettes.

"There is zero, emphasis on zero, justification for taxing e-cigarettes right now," said David Brunori of the group Tax Analysts, a nonprofit tax analysis group. "What this is is a money grab. It's a way of trying to find revenue to replace lost tobacco taxes."

Another rationale for taxing e-cigarettes is deterrence — that higher taxes might make the product less appealing to young people.

"It has nothing to do with revenue," Ohio's DeWine said. "It has everything to do with discouraging use."