5.30 Taxation and pricing of tobacco products

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5.1 Introduction

5.2 Stages in the uptake of smoking

5.3 Factors influencing uptake by young people—overview

5.4 Physiological aspects

5.5 Individual personality traits and psychiatric influences

5.6 Intentions, attitudes and beliefs

5.7 The home environment

5.8 The smoking behaviour of peers, and peer attitudes and norms

5.9 The educational environment: achievements, aspirations and 'school connectedness'

5.10 Other drug use

5.11 Accessibility of tobacco products to young smokers

5.12 Affordability of tobacco products

5.13 Opportunity to smoke

5.14 Cultural background

5.15 Tobacco advertising and promotion targeted at young people

5.16 Products and packaging created to appeal to new users

5.17 Factors influencing uptake of smoking later in life

5.18 Uptake—a concluding note

5.19 What is meant by prevention?

5.20 Approaches to youth smoking prevention

5.21 Mass media strategies/campaigns

5.22 Interactive technology and multimedia

5.23 School-based interventions

5.24 Peer influence and education

5.25 Parent/family/home targeted interventions

5.26 Reducing tobacco access and supply

5.27 Reducing product appeal

5.28 Promotion and visibility of tobacco

5.29 Denormalising smoking

5.30 Taxation and pricing of tobacco products

5.31 Harnessing predictors of uptake to prevent smoking

5.32 Preventing smoking in more 'at risk' groups

Acknowledgments

References

Raising the price of tobacco products, particularly through manipulation of taxes or other imposts, is a key plank of a comprehensive tobacco control policy, and is known to reduce smoking rates among younger smokers,267, 296, 326, 327 based on the premise that young people are particularly sensitive to price and responsive to cigarette prices given their relatively low disposable income.240, 315 That said, making tobacco more expensive does not necessarily affect rates of experimentation among adolescents, or indeed, any age group, since experimenters tend not to buy their own cigarettes, but to acquire them from home, friends, or other disparate sources.277 Responsiveness to price increases with intensity of smoking, since more committed smokers are more likely to purchase their own cigarettes. It is therefore likely that higher cigarette prices have their greatest impact among younger smokers when they are poised between experimentation and regular smoking.326

Jamrozik's Ten Point Plan for tobacco control includes advocating for regular price increases on tobacco products based on convincing evidence that this can reduce consumption, especially among adolescents.328 Effective taxation policy needs to ensure however that increases in the price of tobacco are 'real' (that is, not offset by increases in earning capacity or pocket money in the case of children) to maintain effect.329 Optimally, the price of tobacco products is regularly increased through taxation, at least in line with the cost of living.328

Increasing the price of tobacco products may also be expected to place indirect downward pressure on smoking among young people by reducing smoking among peer groups, adult exemplars, and other role models.330 The effects of pricing on consumption among young people and other smokers are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 13.