The Effect of Public Policies and Prices on Youth Smoking

This article empirically tests the effects of various tobacco control measures on youth cigarette demand using a 1996 nationally representative survey among U.S. high school students. Our measures of public policies allow more precise estimates of their impact compared to previous studies. The two-part model corrects for heteroscedasticity and features a novel approach to evaluating youth access laws based on actual compliance rates. This resolves the difficulty of measuring their active enforcement, the lack of which is frequently blamed for insignificant findings with respect to their effectiveness. We found youth access laws to have a negative effect on smoking probability. Relatively strong clean indoor air laws may also reduce the probability of smoking. The presence of all tobacco control policies combined and higher cigarette prices lower both smoking participation and smoking intensity. The teen-specific cigarette price has a larger impact on cigarette demand than commonly tested state average price.