Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Intended And Unintended Effects Of E-Cigarette Taxes On Youth Tobacco Use, Rahi Abouk, Charles J. Courtemanche, Dhaval Dave, Bo Feng, Abigail S. Friedman, Johanna Catherine Maclean, Michael F. Pesko, Joseph J. Sabia, Samuel Safford

Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise Working Papers

Over the past decade, rising youth use of e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) has prompted aggressive regulation by state and local governments. Between 2010 and 2019, ten states and two large counties adopted ENDS taxes. Applying a continuous treatment difference-in-differences approach to data from two large national datasets (Monitoring the Future and the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System), this study explores the impact of ENDS taxes on youth tobacco use. We find that ENDS taxes reduce youth e-cigarette consumption, with estimated e-cigarette tax elasticities of -0.06 to -0.21. However, we estimate sizable positive cigarette cross-tax elasticities, suggesting …