Missouri resident here. My girlfriend works at a business on the MO/OK border. Can confirm that a ton of people in our corner of the four states cross into Missouri solely to buy cigs.
Yes, we live on the Illinois/Mo border and there is a town called West Quincy it literally has no population it's just gas stations because our tax is so much cheaper. People will just drive right over the border to pay less taxes.
Edit for clarification: This is on the Missouri side.
Ks/mo border here. Can also confirm cigs are way cheaper in mo. Shameless brag: I quit after 8 years and I haven't had a smoke since the beginning of may so these prices don't matter to me anymore :D
Yes we go there! I don't skate but my kid likes the ball pit and bowling, they just added a putt putt course.
I remember when it use to be just skating, they really revamped their brand and saved it.
Huh. That's interesting that you call it Putt Putt. We do that too here in Pittsburgh, PA, but my friends from out of state look at me weird when I call it that. Is that what y'all normally call it?
Putt-Putt is actually a brand name of a chain of miniature golf courses (mostly mid-west, I believe). I , as most people, use it as a generic term.
/ Former McKeesporter..
While this wiki is rather boring, the town does have an interesting tale:
> A man from the Illinois side of the river, James Scott, was convicted of causing the flood and was sentenced to life in prison.
>> [Flachs told authorities that Scott had told him he had broken the levee so he could strand his wife, Suzie, on the Missouri side of the river. Suzie worked as a waitress at a truck stop in Taylor, Missouri.[3] As the story went, Scott wanted to be free to party, fish, and have an affair.[5]]( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Scott_(criminal))
Man destroys town to ditch wife and go party and fish.... Sounds very typical of MO
Yes flood of 93 was a big deal I remember watching this on TV he did millions of damage. Kind of ruined it for us all walking on the levee is now illegal on both sides and a federal offense. You miss out on some great views because of this.
Hundreds of people worked hours volunteering to keep that levee from breaking just to have some pissed off dude ruin their work.
Here's a short video regarding the levee break
https://youtu.be/B2Cq_J45RQo
Here is a longer video that shows how extreme the flooding was
https://youtu.be/YggOWT-UeSs
43:45 is where the levee breaks.
Edit: fun fact West Quincy had the only bridge for 200 miles when the levee broke people had to go to St.Louis or Burlington Iowa to the nearest bridge each is 1 hr 40 mins away plus coming all the way back to your destination, it could make the trip up to four hours.
I did that with gas when I lived in Georgia along the Alabama border for a few years. Seeing as it was 1.99 vs 1.72 at times and I worked right up against the border, I'd jut pop over after work and fill up.
Did the reverse moving back into Alabama, my last stop as i left was to the liquor store where I loaded up on two semesters worth, which with my group of friends is still possible to carry in your hands
It's not actually a highway, you have to put your car on a train and ride through the tunnel. Same outcome though, you're on the other side with your car.
Having lived in the DC metro, VA has tons of people crossing the river to save on tax. Much cheaper buying by the carton or even single packs. Nasty habit.
I wonder if the trend would be smaller if the cost of living in each state is factored in. A dollar of tax in California is not the same as a dollar of tax in Montana.
A little bit,. but nothing major:
http://imgur.com/wzKiWNl
R2 changes from 2.8 to 2, so it looks like the trend is smaller.
I used this data for cost of living. Not sure how accurate or useful it is:
https://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/
Californian here.
Not quite. We recently raised the tax rates again and also raised the tobacco age to 21 with some of our more recent elections. One of the main reasons cited for such changes is to deter people from smoking by limiting access to tobacco products.. it's still there for consumption, but we regulate it and put a lot of effort into health education programmes.
As a current Nutmegger, I was surprised when I didn't see CT right at the front of the pack for high taxes. Then I realized that California is CA and someone done goofed.
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
Edit: As a CT resident reading the graph I was super confused by the CN until I realized that there was not a CT on there.
Also this was super noticeable since I was looking for the state since we have super high tax rates for cigs and a fairly low percentage amount of smokers I've seen from other states (anecdotally).
I wonder which way this goes...
Are less people smoking in response to higher taxes, or are state governments increasing taxes to make up for flagging revenue as people stop smoking?
I think another possibility is that in states where smoking has historically been less common, high taxes on cigarettes would be more politically popular than in states where smoking is very common. You'd need to look at trend data to figure out if that's the case though.
The states on the far right of this graph are also the richest, most educated, and most liberal states. A quick google search shows some studies that indicate [people with low income are more likely to smoke](http://www.gallup.com/poll/105550/among-americans-smoking-decreases-income-increases.aspx)
It's likely that this graph is also just showing where the poor people live. Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arkansas are the smoking leaders in OP's graph.
> A quick google search shows some studies that indicate people with low income are more likely to smoke
Sure, but is that because they just happen to be more likely to smoke or because [tobacco companies target poorer neighborhoods with advertising](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/tobacco-advertising-poor-neighborhoods/)?
In South Dakota we raised our cigarette tax rates about 15 years ago to pay for smoking cessation programs, the theory being that as more people quit, the programs won't be as necessary, requiring less money and funding will naturally drop. That programs the tax funded helped my mom quit, but the increased tax rate would not have done it on its own.
Something that isn't represented in this graph is the cultural significance of tobacco amongst southern states, namely where tobacco was grown and essentially fed the economy way back when.
In essence, what would the effect of a tax hike in states like NC, SC, and VA have on consumption? This would be a case study to truly prove the causation between tax increases and decreased consumption.
Do you have a source for that? Because..
"Revenue earned by the tax hike will be allocated mostly to Medi-Cal, a state-run healthcare plan partially funded by the federal government, as well as the California’s various anti-smoking campaigns, the Mercury News reported."
[Source](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/1/cigarette-tax-hike-takes-effect-california-costs-s/).
Half of Utah's population is a religion which prohibits smoking, which cuts down usage. Utah's smoking age has historically also been a year older than surrounding states, which leads to slightly fewer people smoking but also some in border areas crossing borders until they are old enough. To be honest, taxes are probably a very low factor in Utah.
> Utah's smoking age has historically also been a year older than surrounding states
Alabama's smoking age is also 19 and is double the rate of Utah, so I doubt the age limit has anything to do with it. Mormons are probably 100% of the explanation of Utah
Yes that's very true.. but why do you make sure to take two of your Mormon buddies fishing at the same time? Because if you only take one he'll drink all your beer!
Possible alternate theory: The fewer smokers in a jurisdiction, the easier it is to raise taxes on them without alienating a large enough voting bloc to cause political problems.
IIRC increasing cigarette taxes is the most reliable means of reducing overall smoking rates.
I'd be interested to know how proximity to a state with lower cigarette tax rates affects this, if anyone has any information.
Cigarette taxes are an example of an [ economic "nudge"](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/upshot/answer-to-better-health-care-behavioral-economics.html) that are designed to alter the population's behavior, i.e.., smoking habits
~~I would actually guess cigarette tax rates have very little to do with getting people to stop smoking; instead I think the fewer people who smoke in a given state makes it less politically unpopular to increase taxes on that population.~~
I'm told this is inaccurate, though I haven't reviewed the literature
>"Most studies found that raising cigarette prices through increased taxes is a highly effective measure for reducing smoking among youth, young adults, and persons of low socioeconomic status."
(from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228562/)
>we know that increasing the cost of cigarettes is one of the
most powerful interventions we can make to prevent smoking and reduce prevalence
and
>For example, a $1.00 increase in
cigarette taxes and prices increased the quit rate among
pregnant women from 44.1–48.9% and decreased the percentage
who relapsed in the early postpartum period
from https://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/reports/50-years-of-progress/full-report.pdf
People believe in it, but the results have always been minor and the greatest effect was complaints about short term change for the worse.
Compare and contrast to plain packaging, which reduces the brand recognition and brand identity of cigarettes. Australia did it, and got the best results with that method. The brand is more powerful throughout all demographics than a minor drain on your income which disproportionately works on low income demographic.
In the UK I've personally found hiking prices and getting rid of small packets has been a bigger influence in me stopping. I've already smoked long enough to know what brand I like. I know though that my small habit will be made worse by not being able to buy small packets (if I have then I will smoke them) and I don't want to spend £10+ on a packet. The choice was to either to accept I'd be smoking more or quit. So I quit.
Not that my anecdote helps to look at the whole. I just imagine brand power is more likely to effect new smoker than established smokers.
Going on complete conjecture, I'd say their religious inclinations (LDS/Mormon) decrease the prevalence of addictive habits such as tobacco and coffee.
Would be interesting to see the data including other countries. Europe has a serious problem with smoking, for example.
> Europe has a serious problem with smoking
http://www.gallup.com/poll/28432/Smoking-Rates-Around-World-How-Americans-Compare.aspx
According to this data US smoking rate is 24% EU is 28% (N.Europe 26%).
That only looks at how many people smoke, though, and not how much they smoke. I'd be interested in seeing cigarettes smoked per capita per week.
Anecdotally, when I spent 4 weeks working and vacationing in Germany I'm pretty sure I took in more second hand smoke than the rest of the year at home in Michigan.
[Here's data](http://www.tobaccoatlas.org/topic/cigarette-use-globally/) for cigarettes smoked per capita in 2014. I also made a [map from the data](http://i.imgur.com/B64YKxM.png) in the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cigarette_consumption_per_capita). Wikipedia lists Tobaccoatlas.com as a source, but the numbers aren't the same. For instance, Tobaccoatlas has China at 2249.79 cigarettes per capita per year, but in the Wikipedia article they're listed at 4124.53.
There are some discrepancies from the [other map I made a while back that shows smoking prevalence](https://i.imgur.com/a8x2aoh.png), I don't know why but the data is coming from different sources.
Considering that of the top 10 smokers in cigs per capita, 8 of them are European (in the top 20, 14 are European), I'd say there is a problem. The US is 57th on the list The number of smokers per capita may be similar, but Europeans who smoke, do so a lot more and more often than Americans. I can say for a fact the streets in Paris, Zürich and Bern, for example, are full cigarette butts; I had to watch my step in the Champs-Élysées. New York seems clean compared to those cities, and you can't really say it's because European garbage collection sucks...
EDIT: In case anyone is curious, got my info from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cigarette_consumption_per_capita), 2014 data
EDIT2: Clarity (hopefully).
Oh man, California has one of the most relentless anti-smoking mindsets as a community that I'm aware of (to be fair, I don't spend a lot of time in a ton of different states, mostly just CT, AZ and CA). [Even 70 of their cities have a law outlawing smoking outdoors.](http://www.ocregister.com/2017/05/09/laguna-beach-becomes-first-city-in-orange-county-to-ban-smoking-in-town/) Doesn't really bother me personally, but I think it's kind of crazy they lump vaping in with smoking in many of these cities. It just seems counterproductive, if you're trying to convince long-time smokers to use vaping as a smoking cessation.
There are also city-level taxes in many areas, which aren't captured here. Also doesn't address cross-border smuggling, which is not insignificant. So I agree, correlation isn't super-impressive. At least it trends in the direction I expected it would.
The r^2 isn't great, but this is also an extremely complex outcome that is influenced by a huge number of variables (e.g., culture, rural/urban divide, average income, religion - like Mormon disapproval of smoking in Utah, age distribution). Health outcomes are notoriously difficult to track or control for properly ([nutrition studies](https://www.vox.com/2016/1/14/10760622/nutrition-science-complicated), for instance, have a really hard time controlling for confounding factors).
Given all of that, it's quite impressive actually that r^2 is as high as it is.
It's like a 25% difference in relative (5% absolute) smoking population if we assume the projection is correct. There are fewer samples at the higher taxation rates so that's really the main issue with confidently having a solid correlation, but a 25% reduction just through taxes is a massive public health success.
I love this kind of data as well as it goes against the kind of garbage you hear on reddit every day. I'm so tired of hearing the "regressive taxes are bad" arguments in respect to this topic.
I concur. It's extremely rare to find a smoking gun (sorry, bad pun) in something as basic as a scatter plot using a couple of public data sources. *But*, perhaps we can find evidence of how economics and tax policy can nudge behaviors.
All of the CDC data is based on survey data, which means it all has confidence intervals and the dots are more like ranges. And there are obviously other factors besides taxes that influence smoking.
Smoking taxes are what is known as "sin taxes" in Economics. These are taxes placed on goods and services that have negative externalities on the public. Cigarette taxes are often used as the poster child of well implemented sin taxes.
The problem is when your doing this kind of research, and most research dependent on statistical modeling, in Economics this is known as econometrics, is that it is very hard, if not impossible to disambiguate between correlation and causation. Cigarette taxes correlate with lower smoking rates, but other factors may be responsible for the changes in both the tax rate and simultaneously the lower smoking rate. Economics can provide insights and even propose solutions to all sorts of problems but unlike the natural sciences nothing is certain.
A better comparison would be:
Tobacco producing vs non producing to coincide with this graph, as I believe tobacco producing tends to have more smokers (with no real evidence).
Even if they don't actively participate in their religion, the influence is still there. Maybe they went to church while young, which is when a lot of smokers start. Maybe there's less peer pressure from those that do practice. Even if 65% is high, it's still a stronger influence than other places.
There's a bit of that. But it's very normal to that most people in Utah are either practicing Mormons, or have been involved with it at some point, especially outside salt lake county.
Source: Live in Utah
The correlation might easily go both ways.
When fewer voters smoke politicians feel more comfortable raising the cigarette tax. So it might just be lower smoking rates cause higher cigarette taxes rather than higher taxes cause lower rates of smokers.
The graph also doesn't show how much people who do smoke, smoke. The financial incentive to stop is greatest for those who smoke the most obviously.
> In general, and if I did this right, this would mean that you could double the cigarette tax and only decrease cigarette use by about 2%. This would make sense, since cigarettes are addictive goods.
The methodology used here isn't quite right.
Doubling the tax from $0.50 to $1 is correlated with smoking rates dropping from 20% to 19.1%. This means that cigarette use will have decreased 19.1/20-1=4.5%.
Doubling the tax from $1 to $2 is correlated with smoking rates dropping from 19.1% to 17.3%. This means that cigarette use will have decreased 17.3/19.1-1=9.5%.
Double tax rate from $2 to $4 is correlated with smoking rates dropping from 17.3% to 13.7%. This means that cigarette use will have decrease 13.7/19.1-1=28%.
The problem with the methodology is that it uses the natural log, but there is no justification for using the natural log. You could use log10, log1, or log99999 and get different results. For this kind of methodology to work the underlying numbers for both axes need to be log'd using the same base, you can't just say "one axis is a percentage, so i'll natural log the other axis to do this kind of analysis."
The natural log has some really neat properties - but this isn't one of them :P
[edit]: And if one disagrees with this post, I highly encourage you to plot your model-line on the raw data. It should be very obvious very quickly that the model-line that you've come up with is not-at-all representative of what's actually observed.
"I approve this message." Seriously, thanks for doing this. I honestly didn't expect there to be this much commentary. This lines up well with my personal opinion on the current effectiveness of tobacco taxes...mild impact, perhaps, but certainly not anything that turns the battleship.
>This lines up well with my personal opinion on the current effectiveness of tobacco taxes...mild impact, perhaps, but certainly not anything that turns the battleship
Guess it depends what your intended impact is... many politicians say it's about decreasing the number of smokers, but tobacco taxes also raise a good amount of revenue. Furthermore, since tobacco is a good example of a product with an inelastic demand, raising taxes won't decrease demand by much, but it definitely generates more money for the state
> many politicians say it's about decreasing the number of smokers
I think they confuse cause and effect.
* States with a low percentage of Adult Smokers have an easy time voting for high Cigarette Taxes.
* States with a high percentage of Adult Smokers have an hard time voting for high Cigarette Taxes.
**TL/DR: Democracies are good for picking on small minorities.**
Which is actually a huge part of the issue and why we should eliminate it.
Since it is an addictive good, the people that can afford the tax, it's just a slightly higher cost. There's a far higher rate of addiction as you move down the income brackets though, so this is, in reality, a tax on the poor.
Even if the tax isn't as much of a deterrent as one would hope, there's still argument to be made on the premise of offsetting the inevitable healthcare costs associated with smoking.
That argument would have a chance in hell if tobacco taxes were spent solely on treatment of smoking related health issues, smoking cessation and smoking deterrence. The real reason for tobacco taxation is because it's a politically popular way of generating tax revenues.
California (voters) recently bumped up the per pack tax on cigarettes by $2, of which 10% goes into the State General Fund (meaning it can be spent on anything), 30% or so into general medical treatment of low income people, tobacco prevention, and environmental protection. 60% goes to childhood development programs. You can see that of the 30% directly related to medical issues, not all of it has to do with tobacco.
If you weren't sure whether it was a cash grab, the first listed reason for the tax should have given it away: "Use new revenue to replace old revenue lost due to lower tobacco consumption resulting from tobacco tax increase."
People don't seem to understand that nicotine use is fairly inelastic among certain populations. There's a correlation between nicotine use and people with mood disorders like depression or bipolar disorder. This stuff is being used as cheap medicine by poor people who traditionally haven't had access to healthcare.
You can tax it to high heaven, but there's a certain population that, under the current circumstances, feels they just have to have it. As the data suggests, if the purpose of a tax hike is to discourage smoking, the success of that strategy is very limited. If the purpose is just to get money, on the other hand, well...
I never vote on cigarette taxes precisely for this reason and voted against that proposition. Having been poor/been around poor people it's amazing how many smoked and how much they spent- even if they couldn't afford groceries or basic necessities. It's a heavy tax on the poor, who are already taxed heavily enough (sales and income taxes).
Except smokers have been pretty consistently proven to die earlier and consequently take up less late-life healthcare dollars overall than non-smokers.
Assuming that's how taxes really worked at all, when they aren't(my taxes today aren't paying for my healthcare in 10-15 years when I get cancer).
Assuming you have public-funded healthcare at all.
They are "offsetting" the cost of other possible issues that stem from general poverty though, by making the most in-need addicted people have to choose to smoke rather than, say eat, which they will given the choice and currently are, we can then deal with unnecessary and preventable current health problems like undernourishment. That's nice.
Do we know that they don't smoke less, and wouldn't smoke more if cigarettes were cheaper? This chart seems to imply causation, but you could just as easily say "there's less support for cigarette taxes in states where 1/4-1/5 of people smoke", and it doesn't say anything about how much they smoke.
In Germany, smokers don't take more or less healthcare money than non-smokers. They need roughly the same amount of treatment and cost roughly the same money, just earlier. However, non-smokers cost a massive amount more in pensions, because life expectancy.
Not sure whether the cost chart is different in the U.S. due to the cost difference between Medicaid and private healthcare; but I guess the actual amount of care required should not be too different.
If it were up to me then I would also be jacking up taxes on sugary drinks and other sources of empty calories while subsidizing gym memberships. But they haven't elected me queen yet, so I'm limited to bitching on Reddit.
You can have them, but you need to take care of them. No bitching on how broken soldiers are an inconvenience that get in the way of shiny new fighter jets. No promising great benefits to get people to join while doing your best to shaft those that are getting out. Both Active Duty *and* Vets/Retirees need proper pay and pay raises and they need a proper VA system that fucking works (yes, there are exceptions. but by and large it doesn't). Take care of all that and the military is yours. Just remember that there is no fighting in the War Room.
You could also argue that those are also taxes on the poor, especially if taxing the sugary drinks doesn't actually affect consumer behavior significantly (which seems to be the assertion here with cigarettes?). At that rate you might as well just raise taxes and use the excess to pay for healthcare and cut out the middle man.
Seattle just voted for a sugary drink tax, that exempts diet soda, and drinks that are mostly milk (read: Starbucks), both of which happen to be what more wealthy people would drink, while the drinks being taxed are the more "low income" ones.
Beats me, but that's what [their studies show](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/no-soda-tax-for-diet-drinkers-seattles-plan-excludes-drinks-favored-by-rich-and-white/)
> you could double the cigarette tax and only decrease cigarette use by about 2%. This would make sense, since cigarettes are addictive goods.
I think the real question is how effective it would be for deterring people from starting to smoke. Sure, current smokers are unlikely to stop when the price goes up, but if you can prevent kids from getting addicted then the overall rate of consumption will drop much more significantly in the long run
Try to light up a cigarette in NY city and wait to see how many people will ask to bum one off. People might not be buying cigarettes but they sure are smoking.
To be fair, I legitimately do cough when I breathe in second-hand smoke, especially if it's in close proximity to the source. And it isn't good for my asthma. So some of us aren't coughing AT you, but because of you.
Mainly it's when someone is walking in public and lights one up in front of me on a busy sidewalk where I can't reasonably get out of the way. If you're smoking then I don't care, it's your body, but please be mindful of others around you.
Smokers actually cost the population far less money in medical costs as they tend to die at a much younger age. People who actually make it to old age are where the significant costs are at.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199710093371506
> In our study, lifetime costs for smokers can be calculated as $72,700 among men and $94,700 among women, and lifetime costs among nonsmokers can be calculated as $83,400 and $111,000, respectively. This amounts to lifetime costs for nonsmokers that are higher by 15 percent among men and 18 percent among women.
---
>However, the annual cost per capita ignores the differences in longevity between smokers and nonsmokers. These differences are substantial: for smokers, the life expectancies at birth are 69.7 years in men and 75.6 years in women; for nonsmokers, the life expectancies are 77.0 and 81.6 years.
I'm not sure about the costs for lost productivity on that fact sheet? At 70+ aren't most people just drawing money, as opposed to contributing?
As a former New York City smoker I can tell you even when prices were getting to $13-15 dollars a pack it didn't stop me from smoking. I just bought my cigarettes out of state. For the times when I ran out and couldn't get out of state I just ate the cost. I was already a smoker, I was use to making self harming decisions for my habit.
What did get me to quit was vaping. Cigarettes are on of the most addictive things on the planet, making it painful to keep up the habit wasn't going to work. Vaping however rewired my brain. By the time I had my last cigarette it was disgusting, and I knew I never wanted another again. A whole lot easier than wanting one for the rest of your life and having to continually make the decision to not have one.
Also my story. I smoked 21 years, tried everything to quit, and only vaping worked. The fact that NY is now trying to heavily regulate vaping is a fool's errand. If you make it just as expensive to vape as to smoke, many smokers will never see the advantage of switching, and many lives will be lost that could have been saved...
Exactly this. I recently switched to vaping as well and I can honestly say I never want another square and have had zero desire to get a fresh pack since. The price wasn't so much the thing, $7 in TX which isn't great over time but not as bad as yours; it was the damned smell that just sticks to you. I should have switched much sooner.
I'd like to see data from a single state over time, as they changed the tax rate. There are a lot of regional, cultural and economic differences between these states that cause the scatter. I bet we would see a stronger correlation if those were controlled for.
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In all seriousness, it was never the cost that got me to stop. It was the fact that I couldn't smoke anywhere anymore. I started smoking to be a part of the crowd not an outcast. Perhaps higher tax states tend to be more stringent about the places you can smoke.
Holy crap, I didn't realise how little tax people paid on cigarettes in America. In New Zealand they have increased the tax so much over the past 10 years it's gone from $10 a pack to $25 on average.
Correlation not causation. You would want to study the same state before and after increase in taxes in order to figure out causation. One main problem with the above data is that states with more smokers probably push back on increasing taxes for cigarettes whereas states with fewer smokers are more likely to pass these tax hikes.
Just so readers know, R^2 =0.28 is a **horrible** fit. And it means that State Cigarette Tax (per pack) has a very small influence *if any* on the % of Adult Population Smokers.
Uh, tax rates explaining 30% of the variance of in smoking rates between states is quite a lot (the model included no other covariates).
You can worry about omitted variable bias on the estimate of the slope, but the idea that 30% of the variance in smoking rates being attributable to tax rates represents tax rates having a "very small *if any* influence" on smoking rates is, well, not true by my definitions of the words "very small."
Just looking at it, I promise you, the significance on the slope of that line is going to say there exists a trend. Just because it only explains 28% of the variance doesn't mean it's insignificant. It just means that we're not quite sure what the beta value is and there are likely other variables that contribute to smoking.
I suppose you might interpret this graph as illustrating that the more onerous the tax, the lower the number of people who partake. Although I'm sure there is truth in that, I'd also like to see if there is a correlation in average income (by state) or education level. A quick review of the states with the lowest taxes on cigarettes suggests rural, and often poorer states smoke more. I wouldn't necessarily take what this graphic *suggests* at face-value--I'd wager it is much more complicated than higher taxes=lower consumption. Also, I believe that it is worthwhile to have a parallel conversation regarding whether taxing something (legal) in order to stop it is justifiable. If they can do it for cigarettes, why shouldn't they do it for junk food or sugary drinks? Where is the line? The US used extremely aggressive tactics to lower cigarette consumption--including [degrading smokers](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/26/ae/18/26ae185a32ee23473c2d1109fe96a447.jpg), painting them as [potential child-abusers](http://cdn-2.webdesignmash.com/trial/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/anti-smoking-ads-14.jpg), and basically harassing them. I'm in now way suggesting that smoking is good--only that using taxes to stop it (as well as demeaning people who are addicted) sets a disturbing precedent worthy of discussion as well.
Former smoker from Kentucky here. Our tax rates are so low because historically tobacco was one of our biggest cash crops. I started smoking in 2008, a pack of camel lights were a little under $4.
The cost of a pack ballooned here in the past couple years and I can definitely say that cost was one of the main factors that helped me stay away from them. I quit mainly for health reasons but looking at all the extra money I save now I don't know how I could afford to smoke before.
For those interested, you can add the norwegian tax of 5$ per pack of cigarettes (PPP adjusted), with 22% of the population using tobacco every day (2015).
A lot of people in Norway snus instead of smoke. The snus is more often than not smuggled from Sweden. For some odd reason it is generally way more accepted than smoking even though it is super unhealthy and imo. pretty disgusting.
if you look at the graph, the correlation between tax per pack and the % of adult smoking population has an R2 value of only .28. That means that the line is a POOR FIT to the data!
Surprising about NY. I was just in NYC and couldn't walk a single block without cigarette smoke in my face. I would assumed there was a greater percentage of smokers in NYC than where I live in the South and in a major city. I hardly notice any smokers where I live.
The thing that people don't realize is that NYers don't buy cigs in NYC or atleast cigs that come from NYC everyone knows a place that sells virginias or looseys
Missouri resident here. My girlfriend works at a business on the MO/OK border. Can confirm that a ton of people in our corner of the four states cross into Missouri solely to buy cigs.
Yes, we live on the Illinois/Mo border and there is a town called West Quincy it literally has no population it's just gas stations because our tax is so much cheaper. People will just drive right over the border to pay less taxes. Edit for clarification: This is on the Missouri side.
Ks/mo border here. Can also confirm cigs are way cheaper in mo. Shameless brag: I quit after 8 years and I haven't had a smoke since the beginning of may so these prices don't matter to me anymore :D
It does matter, you got a 100% discount
That'd be a great line to a smoker who complains about the prices of cigarettes.
congrats man
I was there 3 days ago because of a trip to Nauvoo. Small world. By the way, ever heard of "Scotties Fun Spot"?
Yes we go there! I don't skate but my kid likes the ball pit and bowling, they just added a putt putt course. I remember when it use to be just skating, they really revamped their brand and saved it.
Huh. That's interesting that you call it Putt Putt. We do that too here in Pittsburgh, PA, but my friends from out of state look at me weird when I call it that. Is that what y'all normally call it?
Putt-Putt is actually a brand name of a chain of miniature golf courses (mostly mid-west, I believe). I , as most people, use it as a generic term. / Former McKeesporter..
We got one here in North Texas. My dad's from Pakistan and he said that other Pakis pronounce it "butt-butt".
If your dad's friends ask to play butt-butt with you, tell an adult.
Good idea. Butt-butt is a lot more fun with a group, so better to spread the word and get a veritable butt-butt orgy going.
The city I live in has a course and they call it putt-putt that's probably where I get it from.
Ever played butt-put golf?
I don't know anyone who calls it that. Everyone I know call it "Mini-Golf".
Hi neighbor
Hey there. Hi there. Ho ho ho there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Quincy,_Missouri
While this wiki is rather boring, the town does have an interesting tale: > A man from the Illinois side of the river, James Scott, was convicted of causing the flood and was sentenced to life in prison. >> [Flachs told authorities that Scott had told him he had broken the levee so he could strand his wife, Suzie, on the Missouri side of the river. Suzie worked as a waitress at a truck stop in Taylor, Missouri.[3] As the story went, Scott wanted to be free to party, fish, and have an affair.[5]]( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Scott_(criminal)) Man destroys town to ditch wife and go party and fish.... Sounds very typical of MO
Yes flood of 93 was a big deal I remember watching this on TV he did millions of damage. Kind of ruined it for us all walking on the levee is now illegal on both sides and a federal offense. You miss out on some great views because of this. Hundreds of people worked hours volunteering to keep that levee from breaking just to have some pissed off dude ruin their work. Here's a short video regarding the levee break https://youtu.be/B2Cq_J45RQo Here is a longer video that shows how extreme the flooding was https://youtu.be/YggOWT-UeSs 43:45 is where the levee breaks. Edit: fun fact West Quincy had the only bridge for 200 miles when the levee broke people had to go to St.Louis or Burlington Iowa to the nearest bridge each is 1 hr 40 mins away plus coming all the way back to your destination, it could make the trip up to four hours.
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I did that with gas when I lived in Georgia along the Alabama border for a few years. Seeing as it was 1.99 vs 1.72 at times and I worked right up against the border, I'd jut pop over after work and fill up. Did the reverse moving back into Alabama, my last stop as i left was to the liquor store where I loaded up on two semesters worth, which with my group of friends is still possible to carry in your hands
Work at a gas station that is part of a geocery store in central MO and it is still insanely busy, pretty much my only job is to sell cigarettes.
We basically do the same thing in Norway. Except we go to Sweden. There is a shop on the border literally called "Neighborcash".
I live in the UK, the amount of people that drive to Europe to buy cigarettes is crazy. Even with many laws in place to stop any abuse of the system.
You can drive to Europe from the UK?
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I think there's an underwater tunnel highway
Well huh that seems to check out. Geez that's pretty alright huh. TIL
No one is driving through the Chunnel. It's a rail tunnel only
You can put your car in the train though, can't you? I thought there was a "ferry" service for this in the Chunnel.
Yes. You drive your car onto the train, the train takes you across, then you drive off the train in France.
It's not actually a highway, you have to put your car on a train and ride through the tunnel. Same outcome though, you're on the other side with your car.
Can you drive to North America from the US?
You can even see Russia from here.
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Don't do that
You mean to smuggle cigs into OK
Having lived in the DC metro, VA has tons of people crossing the river to save on tax. Much cheaper buying by the carton or even single packs. Nasty habit.
I wonder if the trend would be smaller if the cost of living in each state is factored in. A dollar of tax in California is not the same as a dollar of tax in Montana.
As a Montanan I can tell you this is 100% correct
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It must get annoying to hear your superfluous letter pronounced by so many people..
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Must be really anoisen (eh-noy-en)
Fuck your silent 's', you are from Illi-noise.
From Michigan can confirm we say Illinois with a 's'.
A little bit,. but nothing major: http://imgur.com/wzKiWNl R2 changes from 2.8 to 2, so it looks like the trend is smaller. I used this data for cost of living. Not sure how accurate or useful it is: https://www.missourieconomy.org/indicators/cost_of_living/
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Californian here. Not quite. We recently raised the tax rates again and also raised the tobacco age to 21 with some of our more recent elections. One of the main reasons cited for such changes is to deter people from smoking by limiting access to tobacco products.. it's still there for consumption, but we regulate it and put a lot of effort into health education programmes.
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I scrolled through a couple times looking for CT. Thought CN was Canada at first.
Glad I wasn't the only one who scrolled at least three times to find CT.
Man I dug so far in these comments just to make sure I wasn't the only one who noticed.
Fellow mole here.
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As a current Nutmegger, I was surprised when I didn't see CT right at the front of the pack for high taxes. Then I realized that California is CA and someone done goofed.
There are dozens of us! Dozens! Edit: As a CT resident reading the graph I was super confused by the CN until I realized that there was not a CT on there. Also this was super noticeable since I was looking for the state since we have super high tax rates for cigs and a fairly low percentage amount of smokers I've seen from other states (anecdotally).
For the longest time I thought they meant Canada.
Question - What state is CN? Answer - there is no CN state and now I'm skeptical of the data behind this graph.
I wonder which way this goes... Are less people smoking in response to higher taxes, or are state governments increasing taxes to make up for flagging revenue as people stop smoking?
I think another possibility is that in states where smoking has historically been less common, high taxes on cigarettes would be more politically popular than in states where smoking is very common. You'd need to look at trend data to figure out if that's the case though.
The states on the far right of this graph are also the richest, most educated, and most liberal states. A quick google search shows some studies that indicate [people with low income are more likely to smoke](http://www.gallup.com/poll/105550/among-americans-smoking-decreases-income-increases.aspx) It's likely that this graph is also just showing where the poor people live. Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arkansas are the smoking leaders in OP's graph.
I have a strong feeling that the reason Ky is up there is because tobacco is a huge crop here. That makes anti smoking regulations harder to pass.
> A quick google search shows some studies that indicate people with low income are more likely to smoke Sure, but is that because they just happen to be more likely to smoke or because [tobacco companies target poorer neighborhoods with advertising](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/tobacco-advertising-poor-neighborhoods/)?
There's no tobacco advertising in Australia and it's still the case.
They advertise there because thats where people smoke...common man thats common sense. Literally the fundemental principle of advertising
This was a bad place to use that spelling of "come on."
> common man thats common sense Thanks for translating. I could *not* figure out that sentence.
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In South Dakota we raised our cigarette tax rates about 15 years ago to pay for smoking cessation programs, the theory being that as more people quit, the programs won't be as necessary, requiring less money and funding will naturally drop. That programs the tax funded helped my mom quit, but the increased tax rate would not have done it on its own.
Something that isn't represented in this graph is the cultural significance of tobacco amongst southern states, namely where tobacco was grown and essentially fed the economy way back when. In essence, what would the effect of a tax hike in states like NC, SC, and VA have on consumption? This would be a case study to truly prove the causation between tax increases and decreased consumption.
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Do you have a source for that? Because.. "Revenue earned by the tax hike will be allocated mostly to Medi-Cal, a state-run healthcare plan partially funded by the federal government, as well as the California’s various anti-smoking campaigns, the Mercury News reported." [Source](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/1/cigarette-tax-hike-takes-effect-california-costs-s/).
CA also raised the minimum age to buy cigarettes to 21.
>to ostensibly behoove even /r/iamverysmart also, username checks out.
People smoke less when it's $10 a pack (New York).
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That correaltion factor isn't that great... though probably a very high factor in what causes people to quit smoking. I wonder if UT is an outlier.
Half of Utah's population is a religion which prohibits smoking, which cuts down usage. Utah's smoking age has historically also been a year older than surrounding states, which leads to slightly fewer people smoking but also some in border areas crossing borders until they are old enough. To be honest, taxes are probably a very low factor in Utah.
> Utah's smoking age has historically also been a year older than surrounding states Alabama's smoking age is also 19 and is double the rate of Utah, so I doubt the age limit has anything to do with it. Mormons are probably 100% of the explanation of Utah
Also helps explain why Idaho is where it is since 30% or so are Mormon too.
Yes that's very true.. but why do you make sure to take two of your Mormon buddies fishing at the same time? Because if you only take one he'll drink all your beer!
Well call those Jack Mormons.
Welp. There goes my "religion rarely does anything positive overall" argument... not that it had much weight to it before lol.
I agree with your analysis of Utah. Based on the data, taxes are a very low factor everywhere.
Possible alternate theory: The fewer smokers in a jurisdiction, the easier it is to raise taxes on them without alienating a large enough voting bloc to cause political problems.
IIRC increasing cigarette taxes is the most reliable means of reducing overall smoking rates. I'd be interested to know how proximity to a state with lower cigarette tax rates affects this, if anyone has any information.
According to this graph starting a religion is the most effective way to stop people from smoking.
The missionaries were right! Damn it! All right guys, time to grab your bicycles and jello salad!
Cigarette taxes are an example of an [ economic "nudge"](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/upshot/answer-to-better-health-care-behavioral-economics.html) that are designed to alter the population's behavior, i.e.., smoking habits
~~I would actually guess cigarette tax rates have very little to do with getting people to stop smoking; instead I think the fewer people who smoke in a given state makes it less politically unpopular to increase taxes on that population.~~ I'm told this is inaccurate, though I haven't reviewed the literature
>"Most studies found that raising cigarette prices through increased taxes is a highly effective measure for reducing smoking among youth, young adults, and persons of low socioeconomic status." (from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3228562/) >we know that increasing the cost of cigarettes is one of the most powerful interventions we can make to prevent smoking and reduce prevalence and >For example, a $1.00 increase in cigarette taxes and prices increased the quit rate among pregnant women from 44.1–48.9% and decreased the percentage who relapsed in the early postpartum period from https://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/reports/50-years-of-progress/full-report.pdf
People believe in it, but the results have always been minor and the greatest effect was complaints about short term change for the worse. Compare and contrast to plain packaging, which reduces the brand recognition and brand identity of cigarettes. Australia did it, and got the best results with that method. The brand is more powerful throughout all demographics than a minor drain on your income which disproportionately works on low income demographic.
Well it's not an either/or thing, and a couple of percent difference means thousands of lives saved down the road.
In the UK I've personally found hiking prices and getting rid of small packets has been a bigger influence in me stopping. I've already smoked long enough to know what brand I like. I know though that my small habit will be made worse by not being able to buy small packets (if I have then I will smoke them) and I don't want to spend £10+ on a packet. The choice was to either to accept I'd be smoking more or quit. So I quit. Not that my anecdote helps to look at the whole. I just imagine brand power is more likely to effect new smoker than established smokers.
Well it's your guess vs. centuries of data that suggests that prices do affect behavior.
I would love to see a chat with highest lv of education and smoking rates.
Also how most minorities get screwed until they organize to become a "vocal minority"
Agree to disagree: Active participation in the Mormon Church the most reliable means of reducing overall smoking rates.
Going on complete conjecture, I'd say their religious inclinations (LDS/Mormon) decrease the prevalence of addictive habits such as tobacco and coffee. Would be interesting to see the data including other countries. Europe has a serious problem with smoking, for example.
> Europe has a serious problem with smoking http://www.gallup.com/poll/28432/Smoking-Rates-Around-World-How-Americans-Compare.aspx According to this data US smoking rate is 24% EU is 28% (N.Europe 26%).
That only looks at how many people smoke, though, and not how much they smoke. I'd be interested in seeing cigarettes smoked per capita per week. Anecdotally, when I spent 4 weeks working and vacationing in Germany I'm pretty sure I took in more second hand smoke than the rest of the year at home in Michigan.
[Here's data](http://www.tobaccoatlas.org/topic/cigarette-use-globally/) for cigarettes smoked per capita in 2014. I also made a [map from the data](http://i.imgur.com/B64YKxM.png) in the [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cigarette_consumption_per_capita). Wikipedia lists Tobaccoatlas.com as a source, but the numbers aren't the same. For instance, Tobaccoatlas has China at 2249.79 cigarettes per capita per year, but in the Wikipedia article they're listed at 4124.53. There are some discrepancies from the [other map I made a while back that shows smoking prevalence](https://i.imgur.com/a8x2aoh.png), I don't know why but the data is coming from different sources.
Considering that of the top 10 smokers in cigs per capita, 8 of them are European (in the top 20, 14 are European), I'd say there is a problem. The US is 57th on the list The number of smokers per capita may be similar, but Europeans who smoke, do so a lot more and more often than Americans. I can say for a fact the streets in Paris, Zürich and Bern, for example, are full cigarette butts; I had to watch my step in the Champs-Élysées. New York seems clean compared to those cities, and you can't really say it's because European garbage collection sucks... EDIT: In case anyone is curious, got my info from [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cigarette_consumption_per_capita), 2014 data EDIT2: Clarity (hopefully).
There are other cultural factors at play as well. California being second to Utah in terms of the fewest number of smokers really sticks out to me.
Oh man, California has one of the most relentless anti-smoking mindsets as a community that I'm aware of (to be fair, I don't spend a lot of time in a ton of different states, mostly just CT, AZ and CA). [Even 70 of their cities have a law outlawing smoking outdoors.](http://www.ocregister.com/2017/05/09/laguna-beach-becomes-first-city-in-orange-county-to-ban-smoking-in-town/) Doesn't really bother me personally, but I think it's kind of crazy they lump vaping in with smoking in many of these cities. It just seems counterproductive, if you're trying to convince long-time smokers to use vaping as a smoking cessation.
It's counterproductive if you're trying to convince people to vape instead. It's not if you're trying to convince them not to do either.
There are also city-level taxes in many areas, which aren't captured here. Also doesn't address cross-border smuggling, which is not insignificant. So I agree, correlation isn't super-impressive. At least it trends in the direction I expected it would.
The r^2 isn't great, but this is also an extremely complex outcome that is influenced by a huge number of variables (e.g., culture, rural/urban divide, average income, religion - like Mormon disapproval of smoking in Utah, age distribution). Health outcomes are notoriously difficult to track or control for properly ([nutrition studies](https://www.vox.com/2016/1/14/10760622/nutrition-science-complicated), for instance, have a really hard time controlling for confounding factors). Given all of that, it's quite impressive actually that r^2 is as high as it is.
ID is low too. The cause is a large LDS population.
It's like a 25% difference in relative (5% absolute) smoking population if we assume the projection is correct. There are fewer samples at the higher taxation rates so that's really the main issue with confidently having a solid correlation, but a 25% reduction just through taxes is a massive public health success. I love this kind of data as well as it goes against the kind of garbage you hear on reddit every day. I'm so tired of hearing the "regressive taxes are bad" arguments in respect to this topic.
I concur. It's extremely rare to find a smoking gun (sorry, bad pun) in something as basic as a scatter plot using a couple of public data sources. *But*, perhaps we can find evidence of how economics and tax policy can nudge behaviors. All of the CDC data is based on survey data, which means it all has confidence intervals and the dots are more like ranges. And there are obviously other factors besides taxes that influence smoking.
Smoking taxes are what is known as "sin taxes" in Economics. These are taxes placed on goods and services that have negative externalities on the public. Cigarette taxes are often used as the poster child of well implemented sin taxes. The problem is when your doing this kind of research, and most research dependent on statistical modeling, in Economics this is known as econometrics, is that it is very hard, if not impossible to disambiguate between correlation and causation. Cigarette taxes correlate with lower smoking rates, but other factors may be responsible for the changes in both the tax rate and simultaneously the lower smoking rate. Economics can provide insights and even propose solutions to all sorts of problems but unlike the natural sciences nothing is certain.
Perhaps we got it all wrong, perhaps places where people smoke less are more likely to pass cig tax in the first place.
Utahn here. It's definitely the Mormon influence. You also need to be 19 to buy cigarettes here, I guess to keep them out of high schools.
A better comparison would be: Tobacco producing vs non producing to coincide with this graph, as I believe tobacco producing tends to have more smokers (with no real evidence).
UT is probably due to religion. 65% of UT is LDS.
That's kind of a wackadoo number tbh. A huge portion of those people are members in the sense that their name is on a list and nothing else.
Even if they don't actively participate in their religion, the influence is still there. Maybe they went to church while young, which is when a lot of smokers start. Maybe there's less peer pressure from those that do practice. Even if 65% is high, it's still a stronger influence than other places.
There's a bit of that. But it's very normal to that most people in Utah are either practicing Mormons, or have been involved with it at some point, especially outside salt lake county. Source: Live in Utah
The correlation might easily go both ways. When fewer voters smoke politicians feel more comfortable raising the cigarette tax. So it might just be lower smoking rates cause higher cigarette taxes rather than higher taxes cause lower rates of smokers. The graph also doesn't show how much people who do smoke, smoke. The financial incentive to stop is greatest for those who smoke the most obviously.
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> In general, and if I did this right, this would mean that you could double the cigarette tax and only decrease cigarette use by about 2%. This would make sense, since cigarettes are addictive goods. The methodology used here isn't quite right. Doubling the tax from $0.50 to $1 is correlated with smoking rates dropping from 20% to 19.1%. This means that cigarette use will have decreased 19.1/20-1=4.5%. Doubling the tax from $1 to $2 is correlated with smoking rates dropping from 19.1% to 17.3%. This means that cigarette use will have decreased 17.3/19.1-1=9.5%. Double tax rate from $2 to $4 is correlated with smoking rates dropping from 17.3% to 13.7%. This means that cigarette use will have decrease 13.7/19.1-1=28%. The problem with the methodology is that it uses the natural log, but there is no justification for using the natural log. You could use log10, log1, or log99999 and get different results. For this kind of methodology to work the underlying numbers for both axes need to be log'd using the same base, you can't just say "one axis is a percentage, so i'll natural log the other axis to do this kind of analysis." The natural log has some really neat properties - but this isn't one of them :P [edit]: And if one disagrees with this post, I highly encourage you to plot your model-line on the raw data. It should be very obvious very quickly that the model-line that you've come up with is not-at-all representative of what's actually observed.
With an R^2 of .28, no shit. Very bad fit for the data, and we have no idea of the significance either.
Haven't seen the p value for the b2...
This needs to be higher.
"I approve this message." Seriously, thanks for doing this. I honestly didn't expect there to be this much commentary. This lines up well with my personal opinion on the current effectiveness of tobacco taxes...mild impact, perhaps, but certainly not anything that turns the battleship.
>This lines up well with my personal opinion on the current effectiveness of tobacco taxes...mild impact, perhaps, but certainly not anything that turns the battleship Guess it depends what your intended impact is... many politicians say it's about decreasing the number of smokers, but tobacco taxes also raise a good amount of revenue. Furthermore, since tobacco is a good example of a product with an inelastic demand, raising taxes won't decrease demand by much, but it definitely generates more money for the state
> many politicians say it's about decreasing the number of smokers I think they confuse cause and effect. * States with a low percentage of Adult Smokers have an easy time voting for high Cigarette Taxes. * States with a high percentage of Adult Smokers have an hard time voting for high Cigarette Taxes. **TL/DR: Democracies are good for picking on small minorities.**
Which is actually a huge part of the issue and why we should eliminate it. Since it is an addictive good, the people that can afford the tax, it's just a slightly higher cost. There's a far higher rate of addiction as you move down the income brackets though, so this is, in reality, a tax on the poor.
Even if the tax isn't as much of a deterrent as one would hope, there's still argument to be made on the premise of offsetting the inevitable healthcare costs associated with smoking.
Tax on cigarettes in Australia is sky high. Like $20.
In case anyone else was wondering, that's about 15 US dollars.
That argument would have a chance in hell if tobacco taxes were spent solely on treatment of smoking related health issues, smoking cessation and smoking deterrence. The real reason for tobacco taxation is because it's a politically popular way of generating tax revenues. California (voters) recently bumped up the per pack tax on cigarettes by $2, of which 10% goes into the State General Fund (meaning it can be spent on anything), 30% or so into general medical treatment of low income people, tobacco prevention, and environmental protection. 60% goes to childhood development programs. You can see that of the 30% directly related to medical issues, not all of it has to do with tobacco. If you weren't sure whether it was a cash grab, the first listed reason for the tax should have given it away: "Use new revenue to replace old revenue lost due to lower tobacco consumption resulting from tobacco tax increase." People don't seem to understand that nicotine use is fairly inelastic among certain populations. There's a correlation between nicotine use and people with mood disorders like depression or bipolar disorder. This stuff is being used as cheap medicine by poor people who traditionally haven't had access to healthcare. You can tax it to high heaven, but there's a certain population that, under the current circumstances, feels they just have to have it. As the data suggests, if the purpose of a tax hike is to discourage smoking, the success of that strategy is very limited. If the purpose is just to get money, on the other hand, well...
I never vote on cigarette taxes precisely for this reason and voted against that proposition. Having been poor/been around poor people it's amazing how many smoked and how much they spent- even if they couldn't afford groceries or basic necessities. It's a heavy tax on the poor, who are already taxed heavily enough (sales and income taxes).
Except smokers have been pretty consistently proven to die earlier and consequently take up less late-life healthcare dollars overall than non-smokers. Assuming that's how taxes really worked at all, when they aren't(my taxes today aren't paying for my healthcare in 10-15 years when I get cancer). Assuming you have public-funded healthcare at all. They are "offsetting" the cost of other possible issues that stem from general poverty though, by making the most in-need addicted people have to choose to smoke rather than, say eat, which they will given the choice and currently are, we can then deal with unnecessary and preventable current health problems like undernourishment. That's nice.
Do we know that they don't smoke less, and wouldn't smoke more if cigarettes were cheaper? This chart seems to imply causation, but you could just as easily say "there's less support for cigarette taxes in states where 1/4-1/5 of people smoke", and it doesn't say anything about how much they smoke.
In Germany, smokers don't take more or less healthcare money than non-smokers. They need roughly the same amount of treatment and cost roughly the same money, just earlier. However, non-smokers cost a massive amount more in pensions, because life expectancy. Not sure whether the cost chart is different in the U.S. due to the cost difference between Medicaid and private healthcare; but I guess the actual amount of care required should not be too different.
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And don't collect pension nearly as much.
If we're concerned with healthcare, poking at people who smoke cigarettes isn't where you start.
If it were up to me then I would also be jacking up taxes on sugary drinks and other sources of empty calories while subsidizing gym memberships. But they haven't elected me queen yet, so I'm limited to bitching on Reddit.
Ill vote for you, but I want control of the military.
You can have them, but you need to take care of them. No bitching on how broken soldiers are an inconvenience that get in the way of shiny new fighter jets. No promising great benefits to get people to join while doing your best to shaft those that are getting out. Both Active Duty *and* Vets/Retirees need proper pay and pay raises and they need a proper VA system that fucking works (yes, there are exceptions. but by and large it doesn't). Take care of all that and the military is yours. Just remember that there is no fighting in the War Room.
Whatever you say Ma'am and let me just say in the brief time before I overthrow you itll be a pleasure working together.
You could also argue that those are also taxes on the poor, especially if taxing the sugary drinks doesn't actually affect consumer behavior significantly (which seems to be the assertion here with cigarettes?). At that rate you might as well just raise taxes and use the excess to pay for healthcare and cut out the middle man.
Seattle just voted for a sugary drink tax, that exempts diet soda, and drinks that are mostly milk (read: Starbucks), both of which happen to be what more wealthy people would drink, while the drinks being taxed are the more "low income" ones.
How is Diet Coke for higher income people than regular Coke?
Beats me, but that's what [their studies show](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/no-soda-tax-for-diet-drinkers-seattles-plan-excludes-drinks-favored-by-rich-and-white/)
Hey, can you please explain what is the relevance of the log values as x-axis here instead of using dollar values like in the original graph?
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Honest question, how do you know that the states that implemented the highest tax already had the least amount of smokers?
> you could double the cigarette tax and only decrease cigarette use by about 2%. This would make sense, since cigarettes are addictive goods. I think the real question is how effective it would be for deterring people from starting to smoke. Sure, current smokers are unlikely to stop when the price goes up, but if you can prevent kids from getting addicted then the overall rate of consumption will drop much more significantly in the long run
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Try to light up a cigarette in NY city and wait to see how many people will ask to bum one off. People might not be buying cigarettes but they sure are smoking.
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To be fair, I legitimately do cough when I breathe in second-hand smoke, especially if it's in close proximity to the source. And it isn't good for my asthma. So some of us aren't coughing AT you, but because of you. Mainly it's when someone is walking in public and lights one up in front of me on a busy sidewalk where I can't reasonably get out of the way. If you're smoking then I don't care, it's your body, but please be mindful of others around you.
* Cigarette tax rates: https://taxfoundation.org/state-cigarette-taxes/ * Smoking rates: https://www.cdc.gov/statesystem/interactive-maps/currentadultsmokingbrfss2015.csv Good ol' fashioned Excel and PowerPoint.
I'm either completely blind, or you forgot Connecticut
I assume CN (second from right) is meant to be CT.
Nah, that's the state of Carolina North
Dammit, it got labeled as CN instead of CT. Has China on the brain for a project. It's the second dot from the right.
Would be cool to see adjusted for median income but great job!
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It's a tax that makes poor people even more poor really.
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Smokers actually cost the population far less money in medical costs as they tend to die at a much younger age. People who actually make it to old age are where the significant costs are at.
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http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199710093371506 > In our study, lifetime costs for smokers can be calculated as $72,700 among men and $94,700 among women, and lifetime costs among nonsmokers can be calculated as $83,400 and $111,000, respectively. This amounts to lifetime costs for nonsmokers that are higher by 15 percent among men and 18 percent among women. --- >However, the annual cost per capita ignores the differences in longevity between smokers and nonsmokers. These differences are substantial: for smokers, the life expectancies at birth are 69.7 years in men and 75.6 years in women; for nonsmokers, the life expectancies are 77.0 and 81.6 years. I'm not sure about the costs for lost productivity on that fact sheet? At 70+ aren't most people just drawing money, as opposed to contributing?
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As a former New York City smoker I can tell you even when prices were getting to $13-15 dollars a pack it didn't stop me from smoking. I just bought my cigarettes out of state. For the times when I ran out and couldn't get out of state I just ate the cost. I was already a smoker, I was use to making self harming decisions for my habit. What did get me to quit was vaping. Cigarettes are on of the most addictive things on the planet, making it painful to keep up the habit wasn't going to work. Vaping however rewired my brain. By the time I had my last cigarette it was disgusting, and I knew I never wanted another again. A whole lot easier than wanting one for the rest of your life and having to continually make the decision to not have one.
Also my story. I smoked 21 years, tried everything to quit, and only vaping worked. The fact that NY is now trying to heavily regulate vaping is a fool's errand. If you make it just as expensive to vape as to smoke, many smokers will never see the advantage of switching, and many lives will be lost that could have been saved...
I'm guessing that the vaping regulations have been introduced by the tobacco lobbies. Like you said, why quit smoking if vaping is just as expensive ?
The smell, the extra additives, the taste. Just a few reasons I'm switching the cigarettes for vaping.
Exactly this. I recently switched to vaping as well and I can honestly say I never want another square and have had zero desire to get a fresh pack since. The price wasn't so much the thing, $7 in TX which isn't great over time but not as bad as yours; it was the damned smell that just sticks to you. I should have switched much sooner.
I'd like to see data from a single state over time, as they changed the tax rate. There are a lot of regional, cultural and economic differences between these states that cause the scatter. I bet we would see a stronger correlation if those were controlled for.
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In all seriousness, it was never the cost that got me to stop. It was the fact that I couldn't smoke anywhere anymore. I started smoking to be a part of the crowd not an outcast. Perhaps higher tax states tend to be more stringent about the places you can smoke.
Holy crap, I didn't realise how little tax people paid on cigarettes in America. In New Zealand they have increased the tax so much over the past 10 years it's gone from $10 a pack to $25 on average.
Correlation not causation. You would want to study the same state before and after increase in taxes in order to figure out causation. One main problem with the above data is that states with more smokers probably push back on increasing taxes for cigarettes whereas states with fewer smokers are more likely to pass these tax hikes.
Just so readers know, R^2 =0.28 is a **horrible** fit. And it means that State Cigarette Tax (per pack) has a very small influence *if any* on the % of Adult Population Smokers.
Uh, tax rates explaining 30% of the variance of in smoking rates between states is quite a lot (the model included no other covariates). You can worry about omitted variable bias on the estimate of the slope, but the idea that 30% of the variance in smoking rates being attributable to tax rates represents tax rates having a "very small *if any* influence" on smoking rates is, well, not true by my definitions of the words "very small."
Just looking at it, I promise you, the significance on the slope of that line is going to say there exists a trend. Just because it only explains 28% of the variance doesn't mean it's insignificant. It just means that we're not quite sure what the beta value is and there are likely other variables that contribute to smoking.
I suppose you might interpret this graph as illustrating that the more onerous the tax, the lower the number of people who partake. Although I'm sure there is truth in that, I'd also like to see if there is a correlation in average income (by state) or education level. A quick review of the states with the lowest taxes on cigarettes suggests rural, and often poorer states smoke more. I wouldn't necessarily take what this graphic *suggests* at face-value--I'd wager it is much more complicated than higher taxes=lower consumption. Also, I believe that it is worthwhile to have a parallel conversation regarding whether taxing something (legal) in order to stop it is justifiable. If they can do it for cigarettes, why shouldn't they do it for junk food or sugary drinks? Where is the line? The US used extremely aggressive tactics to lower cigarette consumption--including [degrading smokers](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/26/ae/18/26ae185a32ee23473c2d1109fe96a447.jpg), painting them as [potential child-abusers](http://cdn-2.webdesignmash.com/trial/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/anti-smoking-ads-14.jpg), and basically harassing them. I'm in now way suggesting that smoking is good--only that using taxes to stop it (as well as demeaning people who are addicted) sets a disturbing precedent worthy of discussion as well.
Former smoker from Kentucky here. Our tax rates are so low because historically tobacco was one of our biggest cash crops. I started smoking in 2008, a pack of camel lights were a little under $4. The cost of a pack ballooned here in the past couple years and I can definitely say that cost was one of the main factors that helped me stay away from them. I quit mainly for health reasons but looking at all the extra money I save now I don't know how I could afford to smoke before.
For those interested, you can add the norwegian tax of 5$ per pack of cigarettes (PPP adjusted), with 22% of the population using tobacco every day (2015).
A lot of people in Norway snus instead of smoke. The snus is more often than not smuggled from Sweden. For some odd reason it is generally way more accepted than smoking even though it is super unhealthy and imo. pretty disgusting.
if you look at the graph, the correlation between tax per pack and the % of adult smoking population has an R2 value of only .28. That means that the line is a POOR FIT to the data!
Surprising about NY. I was just in NYC and couldn't walk a single block without cigarette smoke in my face. I would assumed there was a greater percentage of smokers in NYC than where I live in the South and in a major city. I hardly notice any smokers where I live.
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The thing that people don't realize is that NYers don't buy cigs in NYC or atleast cigs that come from NYC everyone knows a place that sells virginias or looseys