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A latest examine has discovered that an Oakland, Calif. legislation requiring cigarette costs to extend to a minimal of $8 per pack led to a decline in gross sales, suggesting that these minimal flooring value legal guidelines may complement tobacco taxation to scale back smoking charges.
Tobacco value insurance policies, corresponding to taxation, are efficient public well being methods which have lengthy proven to scale back tobacco use by elevating the costs of cigarettes and different tobacco merchandise. Minimal value flooring legal guidelines (MPFL)—which set costs beneath which cigarettes cannot be offered—are a considerably newer fiscal device that will additionally discourage tobacco use, based on a brand new examine led by a Boston College of Public Well being (BUSPH) researcher.
Printed within the journal Tobacco Management, the examine examined cigarette and cigar gross sales in Oakland, Calif., after town applied an $8 flooring value per pack/bundle of cigarettes and cigars in 2020. The MFPL led to a 15-percent lower in cigarette gross sales total and a 25-percent lower in gross sales of lower-priced cigarettes through the first 17 months of implementation.
Notably, the examine additionally examined whether or not these MFPLs pushed shoppers to buy tobacco merchandise within the neighboring areas outdoors of Oakland, however they didn’t observe any modifications in tobacco gross sales in these areas, nor did they observe that buyers switched from cigarettes to e-cigarettes or vaping merchandise.
“Our findings show that setting a minimum price on tobacco products can be an effective policy for reducing tobacco sales, especially in local jurisdictions that are preempted by state law from establishing an excise tax,” says examine lead and corresponding creator Dr. Justin White, affiliate professor of well being legislation, coverage & administration at BUSPH.
MFPLs could also be significantly efficient at curbing tobacco initiation and prevalence as a result of they enhance the price of lower-priced tobacco merchandise, which can deter buying by price-sensitive teams—together with youth and low-income people—who’re disproportionately burdened by smoking and associated morbidity and mortality. Smoking stays the main reason behind preventable illness and loss of life in the USA, and people who do smoke sometimes start throughout adolescence.
The examine did not assess the results of the MFPL coverage on particular subgroups of the inhabitants, however the findings recommend that low-income folks would have additionally benefited from this coverage.
“Lower-income people also benefit disproportionately from these policies,” says Dr. White. “Because lower-income people tend to smoke more than higher-income people, they are more likely to cut back on smoking as a result of the policy. They benefit in terms of improved health, more savings on money they’d been spending on tobacco, and more health care cost savings from being less sick later in life.”
For the examine, Dr. White and colleagues from the College of California, San Francisco utilized retail scanner information to evaluate spending habits for cigarettes and cigars at greater than 3,500 shops in and round Oakland, in addition to the remainder of California between August 2020 and December 2021.
Almost all retail shops complied with the MFPL necessities for cigarette gross sales, whereas solely seven p.c complied for cigar gross sales. Together with varied limitations as a result of COVID-19 pandemic, many retailers reportedly had issue stocking cigar merchandise that met a minimal pack dimension requirement that was enacted on the similar time—leading to lax enforcement of the MFPL by Oakland’s public well being officers.
“Ultimately, lack of compliance for cigars meant that cigar prices did not go up as a result of the floor price policy,” says Dr. White. “Policy enforcement is a critical component for having public health policies work as intended.”
The researchers additionally famous that smoking cessation merchandise didn’t enhance after the MFPL coverage went into impact, which means that cessation promotion must be higher built-in into tobacco insurance policies.
“We know that recommended approaches such as nicotine replacement therapy or prescription medications can increase smoking cessation, but only about one-third of people trying to quit use one of these approaches,” Dr. White says. “We need to make it easier for individuals to access evidence-based approaches, and there may be opportunities to use digital technology like smartphone apps and text-messaging programs to deliver timely support.”
The examine was coauthored by Serge Atherwood, analysis information analyst at UCSF, and Dr. Dorie Apollonio, professor within the Division of Scientific Pharmacy on the UCSF College of Pharmacy.
Extra data:
Justin S White et al, Impact of a minimal flooring value legislation for tobacco merchandise on tobacco gross sales in Oakland, California, USA: an artificial difference-in-differences evaluation, Tobacco Management (2024). DOI: 10.1136/tc-2024-058853
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Novel cigarette pricing coverage linked to lower in gross sales in California metropolis (2025, February 24)
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