Smoking tax leads kids to kick the habit
Guess which strategy is more effective in preventing kids from smoking -- education or taxes? The surprising answer is that taxes are much more effective than educational campaigns in deterring underage smokers, said Stephen J. Jay, professor of medicine and public health at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Nearly all smokers start before legal age, he said, and informing kids about the health risks of smoking is an important goal. However, the most effective strategies for prevention are policy changes that affect the pervasiveness and availability of tobacco products.
• No. 1 -- Price increase. "Increasing the price is the single most effective strategy for decreasing tobacco use among young people. It has been shown in study after study," Jay said. "The effect is elastic. Each time you increase the price by 10 percent, you can predictably decrease the use rate in adults by four percent and in teens by seven percent." He added that a tax increase in Indiana will lead to a drop in youth smoking in the state. "If you get the price up there with a substantial increase in the excise tax, you can predict with a high degree of certainty that the tobacco-use rate will decrease in Indiana."
• No. 2 -- Smoke-free environments. "Smoke-free ordinances, smoke-free schools and smoke-free campuses effectively 'de-normalize' tobacco. The tobacco industry knows that if they can weave tobacco into the culture, kids will begin smoking because it's just part of the culture. If you want to turn that around, you've got to get it out of the environment in which kids are spending their time. We have found from good research that if kids think that everybody is doing it, they are more likely to take up the habit," Jay said. The home is another important environment to consider, he said -- parental smoking is among the strongest predictors of underage smoking.
• No. 3 -- Crack down online. Indiana has worked hard to prevent local retailers from selling tobacco products to minors, but internet sales are largely unregulated and undermine state efforts to control underage tobacco use, Jay said. "The tobacco industry has pretty much free reign on the internet. In 2005 there were more than 500 Web sites selling tobacco, and 15 percent of U.S. sales were by the internet. These sales evade state tobacco taxes. Young people can buy cigarettes at low cost and often without age identification," he said. Some states, such as New York and Connecticut, have passed laws prohibiting internet sales of tobacco, but Jay said that comprehensive legislation is needed to curtail these activities nationwide.
