Raising tobacco taxes could curb youth’s cigar habits

The only way to effectively turn teens away from smoking cigars is to raise prices, and one way to do that would be taxing cigars at the same rate as cigarettes.

Almost 14 percent of the males and 6 percent of the females in grades 6-12 surveyed as part of the National Youth Tobacco Survey said they smoked cigars, and most of them lived in states with clean indoor air laws as well as laws banning youth access to tobacco. Those youth living in states with so-called “purchase laws” that penalize youth and merchants were actually more likely to smoke cigars than those living in other states.

Cigars currently are taxed at a lower rate than cigarettes, “even though they produce similar, devastating health effects,” the study’s authors wrote. They estimated a 5 percent reduction in the prevalence of youth cigar smoking if state and federal lawmakers “simply taxed cigarettes at the same rate as cigarettes.”

[From: “ Effects of Public Policy on Adolescents’ Cigar Use: Evidence From the National Youth Tobacco Survey.” Contact: Jeanne S. Ringel, PhD, RAND, Santa Monica, Calif., [email protected].]