Policy Brief

To: John C. Liu

From: Isaiah Tekalign

Date: 07/16/2022

Re: Federal Mandate to decrease tobacco usage and abuse

Statement of issue: Cigarette use is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death within the United States of America. This substance has accounted for more than 480,000 deaths in the US every year. It has also been found that more than 30.8 million adults currently smoke and more than 16 million of them have been diagnosed with a smoking related disease. Some of the smoking related diseases include cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, COPD, and tuberculosis. Without intervention the number of tobacco users will continue to rise as well as the number of people who develop diseases due to smoking and ultimately the number of deaths due to smoking as well. Therefore, I am purposing that to prevent this from occurring the tax on tobacco products should be raised.

• Smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in the US according to the CDC. If the rate of smoking continues the trend it has been following among the youth, 5.6 million Americans under the age of 18 are expected to die prematurely from a smoking related disease. By allowing the tax on tobacco to remain the same it allows youth to have easy access to purchase said product, therefore increasing their chances of smoke related death.
• Smoking costs the US billions of dollars each year. According to the CDC the total economic cost of smoking has totaled to more than 300 billion a year. More than 225 billion dollars are used towards direct medical care for adults who smoke, and more than 156 billion dollars in lost productivity resulting from premature death and secondhand exposure. If the tax on tobacco remains the same the total economic cost of smoking will continue to rise because people will continue to develop diseases and require medical care.
• Many adult smokers want to quit smoking. According to the CDC in 2015 almost 7 in 10 smokers wanted to quit smoking. In 2018 more than half of the adult smoking population tried to quit smoking, however only 7 in 100 people who tried to quit succeeded. Leaving the tax, the same again gives people less motivation to stop smoking and encourages people who have tried to quit to start smoking again because they will still be able to afford it.
• Any amount of exposure to secondhand smoke can be very harmful to both children and adults. People are often exposed to secondhand smoke in their home’s places of work; however, they can also be exposed in more communal settings such as bars, restaurants, or in vehicles. Secondhand smoke can lead to heart disease, lung cancer, and stroke in all ages. By allowing the tax to remain not only is the health of active smokers compromised but also those who have never smoked and are simply exposed to it in certain settings.

Policy Options

• A federal mandate to increase the tax on tobacco annually would require acceptance from respective state, users, and distributors. The tax on tobacco could increase annually based on the reports received from states on how much tobacco is being sold, and how many people per state have been diagnosed with smoke related diseases. Users should also report how much they are smoking weekly by completing a survey. Distributors should document how much product they have been putting out vs. how much they have been selling. Based on average of these results across the country, it can be decided if the tax should be increased, decreased, or remain the same each year.
  • Advantages: This mandate should decrease the usage of tobacco, especially amongst the youth population seeing that the product itself will be more difficult for them to afford. If this is implemented, it should also help the country save money by decreasing the cost of medical care for people who smoke through a decrease in the number of smokers in general. Eliminates discrepancies in tobacco tax within states by approaching the aspect on a national level. Influences people to quit smoking.
  • Disadvantages: Increases the tax on tobacco for every state even if the respect states rates of smoking were not high. There is a chance that reports from the distributors, users, and state may not be completely accurate, therefore has a high margin of error. Distributors may be inclined to falsify their annual reports to have the tax on tobacco decreased so more people buy their product. Users may falsify their reports out of embarrassment.
• A restricted federal mandate, this would be like the previous mandate, however the government would raise the prices per state based on the results gathered from the respective states. There can be a limit placed on how much of a difference there can be within the extra tax across each state, to attempt to keep it around the same state to state.
  • Advantages: This would be less costly than the full federal mandate. This option would also be more accepted compared to the previous one. Distributors would probably be more in favor of this one because it would not have as much of an impact on their revenue as the previous. Ideally it would have the same effects on discouraging people to smoke and decreasing number of smoke related diseases.
  • Disadvantages: A lot of people who use tobacco products may not be in favor of this option and may see it as unfair due to a discrepancy in tax/cost, no matter how little it may be, across state lines. Some people who use tobacco may even cross state lines to buy said products if they know it is cheaper in a nearby state.
• Optional state mandate, this would leave the option to increase the tax on tobacco completely in the hands of the state government. This is like what is currently implemented however now states would determine their increase on tobacco tax by the information gathered from the sources discussed earlier.
  • Advantages: This like what is already in place therefore distributors and people who use tobacco cannot protest the mandate as they could the other ones. This would be the cheapest option to implement compared to the other two options.
  • Disadvantages: Due to this being like what is already in place there is a chance that it may not have any effect on decreasing the number of people who smoke or smoke related diseases. Like the last option there is a possibility that people will travel across state lines to purchase tobacco products if they are aware, it is cheaper.

Policy Recommendation:

Due to the rising rate of people who become smokers as well as people who develop smoke related disease and the projected rise within the next couple of years, it is necessary to implement a fast and effective mandate. The current optional state mandate has not been successful in decreasing the rates of smoking and may have even contributed to the rising numbers. Therefore, it should be recommended that a federal mandate without restrictions be put into place. Doing this will allow an effective method across all states equally, which should decrease the number of smokers drastically, especially in the youth population, within a short amount of time. Furthermore, a federal tax increase has already been shown to be effective from the one that occurred in 2009. When the tax on tobacco increased in 2009 it resulted in over 220,000 middle and highschoolers to stop smoking. It has also been shown that for every 10 percent increase in tax on tobacco consumption is reduced by 3 to 5 percent. These facts show that an unrestricted federal mandate needs to be implemented to regularly increase the tax on tobacco across all states to have an impact on decreasing the numbers of smokers as well as the various effects that come with it.

Sources:

“Cigarette & Tobacco Taxes.” American Lung Association, https://www.lung.org/policy-advocacy/tobacco/tobacco-taxes.

“Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products Tax.” Cigarette & Other Tobacco Products Tax – DOF, https://www1.nyc.gov/site/finance/taxes/business-cigarette-tax.page.

Cigarette and Tobacco Products Tax, https://www.tax.ny.gov/bus/cig/cigidx.htm.

“Fast Facts and Fact Sheets.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17 Mar. 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/index.htm.

“Health Effects.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 28 Apr. 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/health_effects/index.htm.

“The Importance of Tobacco Taxes.” Truth Initiative, https://truthinitiative.org/research-resources/tobacco-prevention-efforts/importance-tobacco-taxes#:~:text=We%20know%20that%20for%20every,the%20decrease%20in%20tobacco%20use.

“Legislation.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5 Jan. 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/policy/legislation/index.htm.