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$170 billion
of annual healthcare spending in the U.S. can be attributed to cigarette smoking
$156 billion
in lost productivity from tobacco use annually between 2009-2012
5.8 trillion
cigarettes were sold to more than 1 billion smokers worldwide in the last ten years
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Recent Research
March 2018
Tobacco & Poverty »
Topics: Economic consequences / Economic impact of tobacco control / Impact on the poor / Tax and price / Tobacco use
January 2018
Cigarette Smuggling in Response to Large Tax Increase in Indiana is Greatly Exaggerated »
Topics: Tax and price / Tax avoidance and evasion
November 2017
Cigarette Smuggling in Response to Large Tax Increase Is Greatly Exaggerated »
Topics: Economic impact of tobacco control / Impact on demand / Tax and price / Tax avoidance and evasion / Tobacco taxes revenues
November 2017
Tobacco Tax Increases Remain Most Effective Policy for Reducing Tobacco Use »
Topics: Cost-effectiveness / Economic impact of tobacco control / Impact on demand / Tax and price
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Recent updates
April 25, 2018
Study Finds that Money Spent on Tobacco Control Efforts Decreases Cigarette Sales
A new paper published by Tobacconomics researchers in collaboration with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published in the journal PLoS ONE finds that overall state spending on tobacco control has a significant negative impact on tax paid cigarette sales. Tobacconomics researchers John Tauras, Frank Chaloupka, and Jidong Huang in conjunction with researchers from the CDC including Xin Xu, Brian King, S. Rene Lavinghouze, and Karla Sneegas examined the effect of state-level tobacco control spending in each of the CDC’s Best Practices categories on cigarette sales. The research is the first nationally representative study to use actual state level tobacco control spending data and not just state level tobacco control appropriations data. Moreover, the study is the first to examine the effects of tobacco control spending in each of the CDC’s Best Practices categories on cigarette sales. The researchers found overall state spending on tobacco control to have a significant negative … Read more »
April 5, 2018
The importance of Graphic Warning Labels on cigarette smoking prevalence and consumption
In 2011, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued regulations requiring tobacco companies to add Graphic Warning Labels (GWLs) to cigarette packages. However, tobacco companies challenged these regulations, arguing that the FDA had not yet established the effectiveness of GWLs in reducing smoking prevalence. Eventually, the Courts ruled in their favor, denying the FDA’s requirement for GWLs in the U.S. Though some of the proposed GWLs by the FDA were gruesome, the intent was not to make people queasy. Rather, GWLs have shown to be an effective tobacco control policy by providing health information to the public while increasing the knowledge of the many public health risks of smoking. This is because the visual aspect of a pictorial warning has been shown to attract greater attention and recall of health warning messages than text-based warnings. In fact, by 2016, 94 countries or jurisdictions outside of the United States implemented … Read more »