Frank Chaloupka

University of Illinois at Chicago | UIC · Department of Economics

Objective: To use a standardised e-cigarette tax measure to examine the impact of e-cigarette taxes on the price and sales of e-cigarettes and cigarettes in the USA. Design: We used State Line versions of NielsenIQ Retail Scanner data from quarter 4 of 2014 through quarter 4 of 2019 to calculate e-cigarette and cigarette prices and sales in 23 U...

Background In November 2021, the Tobacconomics team published the second edition of the Cigarette Tax Scorecard which evaluates cigarette taxation in each country based on four components—cigarette price, affordability change, tax share and tax structure. This study examines the relationship between the overall cigarette tax score and tobacco excis...

This Updated Toolkit was written by Rijo John, Violeta Vulovic, Grieve Chelwa, and Frank Chaloupka. The updated toolkit provides guidance to researchers who aim to study the economics of tobacco control using household expenditure surveys (HES), especially in low- and middle-income countries. The authors provide background on HES and the techniques...

This toolkit provides guidance to researchers who aim to analyze the distributional impacts of tobacco taxation especially in low- and middle-income countries. The authors provide background on the relevant concepts and existing literature, as well as present a theoretical framework. They delve into two methods for estimating the distributional imp...

Background This study examines the association between the Tobacconomics cigarette tax scores and cigarette consumption in 97 countries during the period of 2014–2020. Methods Data on countries’ retail cigarette sales and overall cigarette tax scores from 2014 to 2020 are drawn from the proprietary Euromonitor International database and the Tobacc...

Introduction Tobacco companies maintain that they do not target their products at those under the minimum legal age of purchase, with some multinationals such as Philip Morris International (www.pmi.com/our-transformation/delivering-a-smoke-free-future) also publicly announcing their vision for a smoke-free future, and others, such as British Ameri...

This study aims to examine how e-cigarette prices and advertising, key determinants of e-cigarette demand, are associated with the demand for smokeless tobacco (SLT) products in the US. Market-level sales and price data by year (2010–2017), quarter, and type of retail store were compiled from Nielsen retail store scanner database. E-cigarette TV ad...

Introduction E-cigarette advertising has been shown to increase e-cigarette awareness and use. Although e-cigarette marketing in the early 2010s has been well-documented, little is known about how it has changed in recent years in response to the regulatory scrutiny from the FDA and the Congress to combat youth vaping epidemic. This study aims to e...

Despite mixed evidence, many smokers use e-cigarettes to quit smoking. With the substantial growth of e-cigarette sales in recent years, it is important to understand how it may affect FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products in the US. This study aims to investigate the impact of e-cigarette prices and TV advertising on the demand...

Background Many countries have implemented alcohol excise taxes. However, measures of excise taxes as a percentage of alcohol prices have not been systematically studied. Methods Data on the retail prices of alcoholic beverages sold in stores and excise taxes in 26 countries during 2003-2018 was from the Economist Intelligence Unit price city data...

Tax pass-through rates to prices measure how much prices increase when taxes are increased by one unit, which will in turn determine the effectiveness of taxation policies in reducing substance use. Using longitudinal data of alcohol prices and excise taxes from 27 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries from 2003 to...

Aims To examine the association between alcohol prices and age of initiation of alcohol use and the association between age of alcohol use initiation and heavy episodic drinking (HED) among adolescents in Chile. Design We estimated discrete‐time hazard models using retrospective data and generalized ordered probit models with repeated cross‐sectio...

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Study objectives To compare the prices paid for nicotine vaping products (NVPs) and supplies among current NVP users to prices paid for cigarettes among current smokers. Data The 2016 International Tobacco Control Four Country Vaping and Smoking Survey (4CV1). Key measures included: (1) self-reported prices paid for reusable NVPs (eg, rechargeable...

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disease, are responsible for seven out of every 10 deaths worldwide. While NCDs are associated with aging in high-income countries, this representation is often misleading. Over one-third of the 41 million annual deaths from NCDs occur prematurely, def...

Objectives: In this study, we used a discrete choice experiment (DCE) conducted August-October 2017 to examine electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) product preferences in a national sample of adult smokers (N = 1154) who were also using ENDS or had not ruled out future use. Methods: The DCE evaluated 5 ENDS attributes: relative harm; effe...

The PhenX (Phenotypes and eXposures) Toolkit provides researchers with recommended standard consensus measures for use in epidemiological, biomedical, clinical and translational studies. To expand the depth and breadth of measures in the PhenX Toolkit, the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Food and Drug Administration have launched a project t...

Objective: A Working Group (WG) of tobacco regulatory science experts identified measures for the tobacco environment domain. Methods: This article describes the methods by which measures were identified, selected, approved and placed in the PhenX Toolkit. Findings: The WG identified 20 initial elements relevant to tobacco regulatory science a...

In Reply The goal of for-profit corporations, such as British American Tobacco (BAT), is undeniably to maximize profits. A novel finding from our study¹ is that BAT’s large and sustained price increases suggest that it aimed to maximize short-run profits even if they came at the expense of fewer new young users becoming addicted. Many governments,...

Background: Building on substantial tobacco control action over the previous decade, Australia increased the taxes on tobacco by 25% without forewarning on April 30, 2010. Australia then became one of a few countries to pre-announce a series of increases in tobacco taxes, with annual 12·5% increases starting from December, 2013. We aimed to examin...

Introduction The Experimental Tobacco Marketplace (ETM) approximates real-world situations by estimating the effects of several, concurrently available products and policies on budgeted purchasing. While the effects of increasing cigarette price on potentially less harmful substitutability are well-documented, the effects of other, nuanced pricing...

Cigarette affordability measures the price smokers pay for cigarettes in relation to their incomes. Affordability can be measured using the relative income price of cigarettes (RIP), or the price smokers pay to purchase 100 packs of 20 cigarettes divided by their per capita household income. Using longitudinal data from 7046 smokers participating i...

Objective: At least one type of tax is applied to the sale of alcoholic beverages in all U.S. states. The purpose of this study was to characterize the composition and magnitude of alcohol taxes in states and to assess the relationship between total alcohol taxes (federal plus state) and the cost of excessive drinking. Method: The amount of tax...

Importance Tobacco smoking is still responsible for more than 6 million preventable deaths annually, most of which occur in low- and middle-income countries. South American countries, Chile in particular, endure some of the highest cigarette smoking prevalence rates globally. Despite the lack of any meaningful increases in cigarette taxes (the most...

In countries around the world, tobacco use, excessive alcohol consumption, and consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are significant contributors to the global epidemic of noncommunicable diseases. As a consequence, they contribute, as well, to excess health care costs and productivity losses. A large and growing body of research document...

Objectives: Tobacco company conduct has been a central concern in tobacco control. Nevertheless, the public health community has not taken full advantage of the large economics and marketing literature on market competition in the cigarette industry. Methods: We conducted an unstructured narrative review of the economics and marketing literature...

Objectives: Public health policies are often enacted without adequate consideration of the existing market structure or their impacts on that market structure. This paper provides context for the potential impact of regulations on nicotine vaping products (NVP) use by providing a structural analysis of competition in the US NVP market before FDA r...

Aims To determine if there are associations between changes in the explicit (i.e., price) and implicit (i.e., use restrictions in public places) costs of cigarettes and nicotine vaping products (NVPs) and their use patterns in the United States. Methods Data came from the Wave 1 (2016) US data of the ITC Four Country Smoking and Vaping Survey (ITC...

Background: Tobacco smoking remains a leading risk factor for disease burden globally. In India alone, about 1 million deaths are caused annually by smoking. Although increasing tobacco prices has consistently been found to be the most effective intervention to reduce tobacco use, the documentation of prices and taxes across time and space has not...

Recent tobacco taxation research suggests that excise tax structure plays an important role in the effectiveness of increasing taxes in reducing consumption. However, evidence on excise tax structures of alcoholic beverages is scarce. We linked price variability measures for beer, wine, and liquor in the US derived using Economist Intelligence Unit...

Objectives This study calculates cigarette affordability for 78 countries worldwide from 2001 to 2014 using the Relative Income Price (RIP) ratio defined as the percentage of per capita GDP required to purchase 100 packs of cigarettes using the lowest price from Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) database, examine the association between cigarette a...

The effect of cigarette affordability on per capita ALL consumption. (DOCX)

List of countries of each economy type included in Figs 1, 3 and 5. (DOCX)

Examinamos la repercusión de los precios del tabaco o los impuestos sobre el consumo de tabaco en países de América Latina y el Caribe. Efectuamos búsquedas en MEDLINE, EconLit, LILACS, bibliografía inédita, seis revistas especializadas y referencias de revisiones. Calculamos las elasticidades combinadas de los precios usando modelos de efectos ale...

We examined the impact of tobacco prices or taxes on tobacco use in Latin America and Caribbean countries. We searched MEDLINE, EconLit, LILACS, unpublished literature, 6 specialty journals, and reviewed references. We calculated pooled price elasticities using random-effects models. The 32 studies we examined found that cigarette prices have a neg...

Background The obesity epidemic is spreading rapidly in Guatemala, a low/middle income country still struggling with undernutrition. Sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) consumption is strongly associated with overweight, obesity, and non-communicable diseases. In Guatemala, SSBs are readily available and consumption is high, particularly among adolesc...

Introduction: Australia's excise and customs duty on tobacco has been automatically increased biannually since 1984. Increases in duty on par with inflation ensured that tobacco stayed at least as costly as other goods. This would be expected to maintain, rather than drive down, smoking prevalence. We examined the association between smoking preva...

Background: In Uruguay, real tobacco taxes increased significantly during 2005-2010 and 2014-2017 and decreased during 2010-2014. The effects of these tax changes on illegal and legal cigarette usage differed significantly when we compared cities in the middle and south of the country with cities on the border. Objective: This paper analyses whe...

Background Tobacco use is prevalent among youth and adults in India. However, direct evidence on how increasing taxes or prices affect tobacco use onset is scarce. Objective To analyse the associations between cigarette and bidi prices and smoking onset in India, and how these associations differ by socioeconomic status. Methodology The Wave 1 of...

We analyze data about cigarette tax compliance from the first US-based national scale littered cigarette packs collection. We code each pack based on whether an appropriate tax had been paid at the location where it was found. Non-compliance across our 132 sample communities ranges from zero to one hundred percent with an appropriately weighted mea...

Background: A number of public health professional organizations support the decriminalization of cannabis due to adverse effects of cannabis-related arrests and legal consequences, particularly on youth. We sought to examine the associations between cannabis decriminalization and both arrests and youth cannabis use in five states that passed decr...

Objectives: to calculate cigarette affordability for 78 countries worldwide from 2001 to 2014 using the Relative Income Price (RIP) ratio defined as the percentage of per capita GDP required to purchase 100 packs of cigarettes using the lowest price from Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) database, examine the association between cigarette affordabi...

Background Recent studies show that greater price variability and more opportunities for tax avoidance are associated with tax structures that depart from a specific uniform one. These findings indicate that tax structures other than a specific uniform one may lead to more cigarette consumption. Objective This paper aims to examine how cigarette t...

BACKGROUND School policies and practices, such as the sharing of school facilities with the surrounding community, support physical activity among students and community members, but are often underutilized. This study examined variations in shared use practices, and associations with perceived barriers. METHODS Surveys were completed by a nationa...

Background The price of tobacco products in relation to the income of tobacco users—affordability—is recognised as a key determinant of tobacco use behaviour. The effectiveness of a price increase as a deterrent to tobacco use depends on how much price increases in relation to the income of the potential users. The aim of this paper is to examine t...

This research is the first nationally representative study to examine the relationship between actual state-level tobacco control spending in each of the 5 CDC’s Best Practices for Comprehensive Tobacco Control Program categories and cigarette sales. We employed several alternative two-way fixed-effects regression techniques to estimate the determi...

The Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM) encourages stakeholders to implement a sugar sweetened beverage excise tax. Sugar sweetened beverages are the largest source of added sugars in the USA and have detrimental effects on population health by increasing risks for chronic diseases. Based on existing research evidence, SBM supports an excise tax e...

While the market share of electronic vapor products (EVPs), sold primarily through vape shops and other outlets, has increased rapidly, these products remained largely unregulated until 2016. This study, conducted prior to announcement of the deeming regulations, provides insights into vape shop operator attitudes toward potential government regula...

(1) Background: Several brands of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) carry voluntary health warning messages. This study examined how potential exposure to ENDS magazine ads with these voluntary health warnings were associated with the perceived harmfulness of ENDS. (2) Methods: Risk perception measures and self-reported exposure to ENDS a...

Background Very little is known about the prices of new non-combustible tobacco products such as electronic cigarettes. Moreover, because of this paucity of data, it is difficult to evaluate the cost for individuals to use e-cigarettes and similar products relative to combustible tobacco products. As governments consider economic policies such as t...

Background Since Iceland became the first country to impose a ban on point-of-sale (POS) displays in 2001, there have been 20 countries in total in the world implementing POS display bans as of 2016. Methods This study examined the effect that POS display bans have on smoking prevalence to provide evidence on their effectiveness in tobacco control...

Background : In 2011, the courts ruled in favor of tobacco companies in preventing the implementation of graphic warning labels (GWLs) in the US, stating that FDA had not established the effectiveness of GWLs in reducing smoking.Methods: Data came from various sources: the WHO MPOWER package (GWLs, MPOWER policy measures, cigarette prices), Euromon...

Objective As part of the Smoke-Free Illinois Act, smoking on the gambling floors of all commercial casinos in Illinois became prohibited. This study examined the effects of the Smoke-Free Illinois Act on casino admissions per-capita and real per-capita adjusted gross receipts using 18 years of data (10 years before and 8 years after the Illinois la...

The Tobacco Control Scorecard, published in 2004, presented estimates of the effectiveness of different policies on smoking rates. Since its publication, new evidence has emerged. We update the Scorecard to include recent studies of demand-reducing tobacco policies for high-income countries. We include cigarette taxes, smoke-free air laws, media ca...

Background Since Iceland became the first country to impose a ban on point-of-sale (POS) tobacco product displays in 2001, 20 countries have implemented POS display bans as of 2016. This study examined the effect that POS display bans have on smoking prevalence. Methods Data were sourced from Euromonitor International and the WHO MPOWER package fo...

Aims: We estimated associations between e-cigarette prices (both disposable and refill) and e-cigarette use among middle and high-school students in the United States. We also estimated associations between cigarette prices and e-cigarette use. Design: We used regression models to estimate the associations between e-cigarette and cigarette price...

Objective To examine the impact of flavour, device type and health warning messages on youth preference for electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), and to provide evidence and data to inform the Food and Drug Administration’s potential regulatory actions on ENDS. Design An online discrete choice experiment was conducted in September 2015. Eac...

The 60% decline in the prevalence of cigarette smoking among U.S. adults over the past 50 years represents a significant public health achievement. This decline was steered in part by national, state, and local tobacco control programs and policies, such as public education campaigns; widespread smoke-free air laws; higher cigarette prices that hav...

With provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act, attention to physical education (PE) programs in school will be crucial for developing well-rounded students. We assessed the availability of resources that have the potential to impact PE (staffing, continuing education, annual PE equipment budgets) in a nationally-representative sample of 640 U.S...

Introduction: State value-added taxes (VAT) on tobacco products have been increased significantly in recent years in India. Evidence on how these VATs were associated with smoking is highly needed. Methods: State bidi and cigarette VAT rates were linked to Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) India 2009-2010 and Tobacco Control Policy (TCP) India...

There is strong scientific evidence supporting the effectiveness of increasing alcohol taxes for reducing excessive alcohol consumption and related problems. Opponents have argued that alcohol tax increases lead to job losses. However, there has been no comprehensive economic analysis of the impact of alcohol taxes on employment. To fill this gap,...

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) introduced the MPOWER package to support policy implementation under the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). This study examined the effect of MPOWER policies on smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption in a global context. Methods: The MPOWER composite score was constructed by addi...

Introduction: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has estimated the economic impact of Graphic Warning Labels (GWLs). By omitting the impact on tobacco consumption by pregnant women, the FDA analysis underestimates the economic benefits that would occur from the proposed regulations. There is a strong link between the occurrence of low birt...

Introduction: The Guidelines for the implementation of Article 11 of the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) require that cigarette health warning labels should include pictures and take up 50% or more of the principal display area. This study examined how the association between large pictorial warnings,...

Some manufacturers of electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) voluntarily carried health warnings in their advertisements. This study examined these voluntary warnings in magazine ads and plotted their trends between 2012 and early 2015. ENDS magazine ads were obtained through Kantar media and warnings were collected from the Chicago Public Lib...

Objective: To estimate cigarette demand and to simulate a tax policy targeted to reduce tobacco consumption. Materials and methods: Demand was estimated using a vector error correction model. Simulation exercises present the impact of a tax increase on consumption and revenues. Results: Changes in real income and the real price of cigarettes affe...

BACKGROUND We examined the prevalence of school garden programs at US public elementary schools. The study examined time trends, demographic and regional disparities, and associations with related programs such as farm-to-school. METHODS Annual surveys were gathered from nationally representative samples of elementary schools between 2006-2007 and...

We examined racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and urban/rural disparities in food policy enactment across different sectors, as well as retail food access, throughout the United States. Policy and retail food store data were obtained from 443 communities as part of the Bridging the Gap Community Obesity Measures Project. Our results indicated that medi...

Introduction: Tobacco use has shifted increasingly from cigarettes to other products. While the focus has been mostly on cigarette-oriented policies, it is important to gauge the effects of policies targeting other products. We review and critique the literature on how policies affect smokeless tobacco (ST). Methods: We conducted a search of the...

Background Non-menthol characterising flavours (eg, fruit, candy) are banned in cigarettes, yet are still permitted in non-cigarette tobacco (NCT) products. This study examined associations between first use and current use of flavoured tobacco products, and current flavoured tobacco use and quit behaviours. Methods A nationally representative, te...

Introduction A number of recent studies document the proportion of all cigarette packs that are ‘contraband’ using discarded packs to measure tax avoidance and evasion, which we call tax non-compliance. To date, academic studies using discarded packs focused on relatively small geographical areas such as a city or a neighbourhood. Methods We visit...

Background Minimum markup/price laws (MPLs) have been proposed as an alternative non-tax pricing strategy to reduce tobacco use and access. However, the empirical evidence on the effectiveness of MPLs in increasing cigarette prices is very limited. This study aims to fill this critical gap by examining the association between MPLs and cigarette pri...

We examined the impact of tobacco prices or taxes on tobacco use in Latin America and Caribbean countries. We searched MEDLINE, EconLit, LILACS, unpublished literature, 6 specialty journals, and reviewed references. We calculated pooled price elasticities using random-effects models. The 32 studies we examined found that cigarette prices have a neg...

Background: China is the world's largest producer and consumer of cigarettes. The status of tobacco as both a contributor to China's economy and a liability for the health of its population may complicate the use of taxes for addressing smoking in the country. Understanding how cigarette prices affect transitions in smoking behaviour in China can...

The integration of physical activity into elementary school classrooms, through brief activity breaks (ABs) and lessons that incorporate movement into instruction as active lessons (ALs), are key parts of school physical activity programming and can improve children’s health and academic outcomes. With nationally representative survey data from 640...

Objectives: To examine disparities in the price of tobacco and nontobacco products in pharmacies compared with other types of stores. Methods: We recorded the prices of Marlboro, Newport, the cheapest cigarettes, and bottled water in a random sample of licensed tobacco retailers (n = 579) in California in 2014. We collected comparable data from...

Background Native American tribes, as sovereign nations, are exempt from state tobacco excise taxation, and self-govern on-reservation activity in the USA. Under Federal law, state excise taxes are owed by non-members purchasing tobacco on tribal land, but states are limited in how they enforce or collect these taxes. This study highlights the vari...

Introduction: Despite strong evidence that increasing alcohol taxes reduces alcohol-related harm, state alcohol taxes have declined in real terms during the past 3 decades. Opponents of tax increases argue that they are unfair to "responsible" drinkers and those who are financially disadvantaged. The objectives of this study were to assess the imp...