THURSDAY, March 13, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- If you raise taxes on cigarettes so teenagers can't afford them, will those kids grow up to be adults who don't smoke?
Probably not, says a researcher who is questioning a common way to discourage tobacco use.
"Taxes seemed to delay the initiation of smoking -- not prevent it," says Sherry Glied, chairwoman of the department of health policy and management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
However, Glied isn't pushing for the reduction of cigarette taxes, which contribute mightily to making smoking an expensive habit in many states. Instead, she says, government officials need to remember they can't rely solely on higher cigarette taxes as a way to make fewer people smoke.
"Sin taxes" on such things as liquor and tobacco are nothing new, of course. However, states have only started to realize their value as a smoking deterrent over the last decade, says Tom Glynn, director of cancer science for the American Cancer Society.
Before that time, "taxes weren't even on the radar as an intervention approach," Glynn says. "They were something that jurisdictions did to raise funds, and that was about it. About 10 years ago, it began to dawn on people that taxes actually did help kids not start, and adults stop, smoking."
According to the American Lung Association, 14 states and the District of Columbia levy cigarette taxes of at least $1 per pack. The highest taxes per pack are in Massachusetts ($1.51) and New York and New Jersey ($1.50). Tobacco-growing states are much less friendly toward cigarette taxes, and Virginia levies the lowest tax, just 2.5 cents per pack.
Many researchers agree teenagers are vulnerable to higher taxes. An increase of $1 in Maine's cigarette tax contributed to a 36 percent drop in smoking among high school students from 1997 to 2001, according to the American Lung Association.
"It looks like taxes affect teens the most, meaning that they are the most price-sensitive," Glynn says. "Kids just have less disposable income."
Glied reviewed research about taxes and smoking -- both her own and that of others -- and reports her findings in the March issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
In a recent study, Glied looked at data from a research project that followed young people from 1979 (when they were 14 to 24 years old) to 1994 (when they were 29 to 39 years old). She compared smoking rates among the adults to the cigarette taxes in the various states where they had lived as teens.
While the taxes appeared to prevent smoking among the teens, they did little or nothing to affect smoking rates after the teens grew up and neared middle age, Glied found.
Another study, which examined pregnant women aged 24 and older, also failed to find a significant link between cigarette taxes women would have paid as teenagers and their smoking habits as adults.
The findings suggest governments should use several approaches for teens -- including education -- to prevent then smoking over their entire lifetime, Glied says.
"There's a difference between teaching kids facts and decision-making skills and stopping them from smoking through prohibitions or taxes," she says.
She adds the government needs to keep working to prevent smoking among adults, who are more vulnerable to workplace smoking restrictions than they are to higher taxes.
Glynn says Glied's opinions aren't necessarily groundbreaking to those who work in the anti-smoking arena, but he adds they should get attention from politicians.
"Legislators and politicians may say, 'Hmmm, we need to think about this when we propose any kind of legislation. We can't just become tax-dependent. We have to look at a comprehensive approach,'" he adds.
More information
For more information on the legal battle against tobacco, upcoming anti-smoking legislation and the latest tobacco research, visit Action on Smoking and Health.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tips on quitting smoking.
