People Are Ditching Cigarettes For Vaping For Reasons Other Than Their Health

Taxes on traditional cigarettes may be driving smokers to try vaping.

A $1 tax increase on traditional cigarettes reduces cigarette use by 1.9% overall and by 3.5% for daily smokers, says a new study distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). It also increased vaping rates by 9.7%.

The study determined these results by cross-referencing dates of state cigarette excise tax changes with data from Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) surveys and National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS) between 2011 and 2017.

The BRFSS polls more than 400,000 U.S. adults each year, and the NHIS surveys about 33,000. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention oversees both of these surveys.

E-cigarettes aren’t subject to traditional state and federal cigarette excise taxes because their use doesn’t lead to the inhalation of tar.

Cigarette taxes also increased e-cigarette use, according to the study, which was co-authored by researchers from Georgia State University, Temple University, and the University of Kentucky.

These results suggest some smokers are making the switch from traditional cigarettes to e-cigarettes as taxes on traditional cigarettes rise. “We provide the first evidence on the effects of traditional cigarette taxes on traditional cigarette use and e-cigarette use in a time period when e-cigarettes were widely available in tobacco markets,” the researchers wrote in the study paper.

Every state in the country taxes cigarettes, with the average tax on a pack of 20 cigarettes sitting at $1.81 and some taxes — like the one in New York state — reaching as high as $4.35. These are on top of the $1.01 federal cigarette tax. A pack of cigarettes in New York City now starts at $13.