You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Original research
Tobacco manufacturer lobbying to undercut minimum price laws: an analysis of internal industry documents
  1. Dorie E Apollonio1,
  2. Stanton Glantz2
  1. 1 Department of Clinical Pharmacy, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA
  2. 2 Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA
  1. Correspondence to Dr Dorie E Apollonio, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143-1390, USA; dorie.apollonio{at}ucsf.edu

Abstract

Background Increasing the price of tobacco products has the potential to reduce tobacco consumption. As other forms of promotion have been increasingly restricted over time, tobacco manufacturers have relied more on trade discounts. Minimum price laws that prevented the use of manufacturer promotions were once common; however in most US jurisdictions these discounts are now legally protected.

Methods We collected tobacco industry documents, state legislation and court cases between 1987 and 2016 to review tobacco manufacturer strategies to change minimum price laws in the USA.

Results Beginning in 2000, tobacco manufacturers lobbied to amend minimum price legislation after state regulators indicated that manufacturer promotions were illegal under existing laws. Companies viewed changing these laws as critical to maintaining tobacco sales, and after the initiation of an industry lobbying campaign, at least 20 states changed the way they calculated tobacco prices.

Conclusions Modifying existing minimum price laws so that manufacturer discounts are no longer protected, and implementing new minimum price policies with comparable scope, would likely increase prices and reduce tobacco use.

  • advertising and promotion
  • advocacy
  • price
  • public policy
  • tobacco industry documents

https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2019-055354

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.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Twitter @ProfGlantz

    • Contributors DEA and SG conceived and designed the paper, interpreted the results, reviewed and revised the manuscript in preparation for publication and read and approved the final manuscript. DEA wrote the first draft.

    • Funding This study was funded by National Cancer Institute (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000054) grant number: 087472.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement Data are available in a public, open access repository. The data used in this paper are publicly accessible from the Truth Tobacco Industry Document Library at https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/.