Previous research has shown that raising cigarette taxes decreases the number of teenagers who smoke or the number of cigarettes they smoke if they do. This study, published in the February issue of Nicotine & Tobacco Research, is the first to show how much cigarette tax increases affect adolescents who smoke every day.
Teenagers who experiment with smoking or smoke only infrequently are unlikely to be dissuaded by prices increases because they mostly bum cigarettes, says author Lan Liang, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“Regular smokers, on the other hand, are more likely to purchase their own cigarettes. When the amount of money they spend on cigarettes constitutes a larger share of their budgets, economic theory predicts that they will be more responsive to price,” Liang explains.
The researchers analyzed 1992, 1993 and 1994 data from the Monitoring the Future Surveys of 8th-, 10th- and 12-grade students. The survey collects data on a nationally representative sample of 15,000 to 19,000 students per grade each year.
According to this studies, teenagers living in areas where a taxes pushed the cost of a pack of cigarettes above $2.32 (adjusted to 2001 dollars) were about 13 percent less likely to smoke any cigarettes than teenagers living in areas with prices below $2.07.
Teenagers in the high-tax areas were also about 30 percent less likely to smoke a pack or more a day when compared with teens in the low-tax areas. Teens in areas with middle-of-the-road taxes fell predictably along this continuum.
The researchers note that their study is limited by the fact that they did not assess smoking intensity above a pack a day and so could not determine how price affected teenagers who were heavier smokers.
However, “given the estimates above, it is likely that there are further differences between teens who smoke one pack of cigarettes per day and those who smoke two packs per day,” they say.
Overall, the study shows that increasing cigarette prices discourages teens from becoming heavier smokers, they say.
The study was funded through grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nicotine & Tobacco Research is the official peer-reviewed quarterly journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. For information about the journal, contact Gary E. Swan, Ph.D., at (650) 859-5322.
Journal
Nicotine & Tobacco Research