{"id":12929,"date":"2020-08-26T10:20:16","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T14:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/countertools.wpengine.com\/?p=12929"},"modified":"2020-08-25T13:21:29","modified_gmt":"2020-08-25T17:21:29","slug":"reducing-tobacco-disparities-with-minimum-floor-price-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/countertools.org\/blog\/reducing-tobacco-disparities-with-minimum-floor-price-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"Reducing Tobacco Disparities with Minimum Floor Price Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the Surgeon General, raising the price of tobacco products is one of the most effective strategies for reducing initiation, decreasing consumption and increasing cessation. While excise taxes are a common strategy for increasing tobacco prices, minimum floor price laws are another promising non-tax strategy with the potential to reduce health disparities.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Each day, companies all over the world work on strategies to convince us to purchase their product. Whether we like it or not, all of us are constant targets for marketing, through avenues including the internet, television, sponsorships and more. For the tobacco industry, the point-of-sale remains a favorite marketing focus, due in part to the many restrictions in tobacco advertising through other venues. In 2018, the tobacco industry spent over $7.2 billion to advertise and promote their products in the retail environment. This marketing often disproportionately targets minority and low-income neighborhoods and, unfortunately, these efforts are paying off for the tobacco industry. Despite an overall decline in smoking since 1964,\u00a0higher rates of smoking<\/a>\u00a0remain among individuals of lower socioeconomic status and education level.<\/p>\n

Most of us recognize that price plays a huge role in which products we choose to buy, how much we consume, and how often. This concept holds true for tobacco, with\u00a0research by the Center for Public Health Systems Science<\/a>\u00a0suggesting that for every 10% increase in the price of cigarettes, adult smoking rates decrease by up to 5% and youth smoking rates decrease by up to 7%. With this in mind, it\u2019s no surprise that the tobacco industry uses price discounts as one of their top marketing strategies in an effort to keep tobacco cheap and accessible. In fact, price discounts are responsible for\u00a0over 85% of tobacco industry spending<\/a>. Once again, we see price-sensitive groups, like youth and low-income communities, as the target for more price discounts and lower-priced tobacco products. On top of targeted marketing efforts, these communities often have the highest density of tobacco retailers.<\/p>\n

According to the\u00a02012 Surgeon General\u2019s Report<\/a>, raising the price of tobacco products is one of the most effective strategies for reducing initiation, decreasing consumption and increasing cessation. While\u00a0raising excise taxes<\/a>\u00a0is the gold standard for raising the price of tobacco products,\u00a0other non-tax strategies<\/a>\u00a0exist for states and communities facing political barriers to excise tax increases.<\/p>\n

One of these non-tax strategies with promising evidence is establishing\u00a0minimum floor pr<\/a>ice laws<\/a>\u00a0(MFPLs). As the name suggests, MFPLs set a price below which products cannot be sold. MFPLs have been implemented in several communities across the country, including\u00a0New York City<\/a>. One benefit of MFPLs is the potential to prevent the price discounts offered by the tobacco industry that often make excise taxes less impactful. Establishing minimum prices for\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0tobacco products may help encourage price sensitive users to\u00a0quit rather than switch<\/a>\u00a0to another product. MFPLs result in the largest price increase for the cheapest products, sometimes even pricing discount brands out of the market. Because of this, minority and low-income communities where cheap tobacco products are more prevalent will likely face the largest price increases from MFPLs. Additionally, strong minimum price laws can prevent price manipulation by geographic area or by brand, thereby reducing targeting of certain products to price-sensitive populations. To be clear, this means low-income smokers will experience a higher financial burden as a result of MFPLs. However, since these communities face the highest tobacco-related morbidity and mortality, MFPLs have the potential to reduce health disparities\u00a0if<\/em>\u00a0accompanied by strong cessation resources.<\/p>\n

While there is still much to learn on the long-term impacts of MFPLs, emerging research suggests that MFPLs help reduce health disparities. For example, findings from a\u00a0simulation of MFPL options in the state of California<\/a>\u00a0suggest that as the floor price of cigarettes increased, prevalence of tobacco use and cigarette consumption decreased most significantly among individuals in households below 250% federal poverty level. For more information on this simulation model, and other general information on minimum floor pricing strategies, check out CADCA\u2019s recent Research Into Action webinar. \u201cTobacco Minimum Floor Price Laws and Adult Smoking Prevalence<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This post was originally published as a feature article for\u00a0The Geographic Health Equity Alliance (GHEA)<\/a>, a CADCA initiative. GHEA is a CDC funded National Network dedicated to reducing geographic health disparities related to tobacco and cancer.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the Surgeon General, raising the price of tobacco products is one of the most effective strategies for reducing initiation, decreasing consumption and increasing cessation. While excise taxes are a common strategy for increasing tobacco prices, minimum floor price laws are another promising non-tax strategy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":12932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,70,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-equity","category-point-of-sale","category-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/countertools.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/countertools.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/countertools.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/countertools.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/countertools.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/countertools.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/countertools.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/countertools.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/countertools.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/countertools.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}