Article Text

Download PDFPDF
The impact of tobacco prices on smoking onset: a methodological review
  1. Godefroy Emmanuel Guindon1,2,3
  1. 1Département d'administration de la santé, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada
  2. 2Institut de recherche en santé publique de l'Université de Montréal, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada
  3. 3Propel Centre for Population Health Impact, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
  1. Correspondence to Dr Godefroy Emmanuel Guindon, Département d'administration de la santé, Faculté de médicine, Université de Montréal, C.P.6128, succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, H3C 3J7 Québec, Canada; emmanuel.guindon{at}umontreal.ca

Abstract

The benefits of preventing smoking onset are well known. Existing reviews clearly demonstrate that increasing the prices of tobacco products reduces smoking prevalence and cigarette consumption. However, only a small number of studies included in existing reviews have examined smoking onset (the transition between never smoking and smoking). Moreover, existing reviews provide limited quality assessment of the data and methods utilised. This paper systematically searches for and critically reviews studies that examine the impact of tobacco prices or taxes on smoking onset. Most studies reviewed have important methodological limitations, including recall bias; a general failure to apply diagnostic tests, to discuss the choice of estimators and distributional assumptions and to conduct sensitivity analysis; and a reliance on empirical approaches that are methodologically weak. On the whole, existing studies do not provide strong evidence that tobacco prices or taxes affect smoking onset.

  • Economics
  • Taxation
  • Price

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.