Intensive tobacco control measures can sharply reduce smoking rates

May 26 2005

Comprehensive tobacco control efforts, including raising cigarette taxes, making workplaces smoke free and offering free and readily accessible nicotine patches, have a widespread impact on lowering smoking rates.

According to a study of the impact of tobacco control measures in New York City, smoking prevalence among adult residents dropped by 11 percent from 2002-2003 after the city implemented a sweeping tobacco control strategy. That strategy includes increased cigarette excise taxes; legal action that made virtually all workplaces, including bars and restaurants, smoke free; increased cessation services, including a large-scale nicotine patch program; education; and evaluation. The resulting decrease meant 140,000 fewer people smoked in the year following the tobacco control implementation.

In California, where a tobacco-tax increase already helped the state’s smoking rate drop a decade earlier, an additional 50-cent-per-pack state cigarette tax that went into effect in 1999 and a 45-cent-per-pack increase stemming from the Master Settlement Agreement of 1998 helped reduce cigarette consumption in the state by 2.4 packs per capita per quarter.

[From: “ Adult Tobacco Use Levels After Intensive Tobacco Control Measures: New York City, 2002-2003.” Contact: Thomas R. Frieden, MD, MPH, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, New York, N.Y., [email protected]. Also from: “A Major State Tobacco Tax Increase, the Master Settlement Agreement, and Cigarette Consumption: The California Experience.” Contact: Hai-Yen Sung, PhD, Institute for Health and Aging, University of California at San Francisco, [email protected].]