Intended and unintended effects of e-cigarette taxes on youth tobacco use

Rahi Abouk, Charles Courtemanche, Dhaval Dave, Bo Feng, Abigail S. Friedman, Johanna Catherine Maclean, Michael Pesko, Joseph J. Sabia and Samuel Safford

Journal of Health Economics, 2023, vol. 87, issue C

Abstract: Over the past decade, rising youth use of e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) has contributed to aggressive regulation by state and local governments. Between 2010 and mid-2019, ten states and two large counties adopted ENDS taxes. We use two large national surveys (Monitoring the Future and the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System) to estimate the impact of ENDS taxes on youth tobacco use. We find that ENDS taxes reduce youth ENDS consumption, with estimated ENDS tax elasticities of -0.06 to -0.21. However, we estimate sizable positive cigarette cross-tax effects, suggesting economic substitution between cigarettes and ENDS for youth. These substitution effects are particularly large for frequent cigarette smoking. We conclude that the unintended effects of ENDS taxation may considerably undercut or even outweigh any public health gains.

Keywords: Electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS); E-cigarettes; Vaping; Cigarettes; Smoking; Taxes; Youth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H2 I1 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629622001345
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Intended and Unintended Effects of E-cigarette Taxes on Youth Tobacco Use (2022)
Working Paper: Intended and Unintended Effects of E-cigarette Taxes on Youth Tobacco Use (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:87:y:2023:i:c:s0167629622001345

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2022.102720

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire

More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().