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November 1st, 2002:

Tax, Price and Cigarette Smoking

Tobacco Control 2002;11:i62-i72

Article

Tax, price and cigarette smoking: evidence from the tobacco documents and implications for tobacco company marketing strategies

F J Chaloupka1, K M Cummings2, CP Morley2, JK Horan2

1 Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
2 Department of Cancer Prevention, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York, USA

Correspondence to:
F J Chaloupka, Department of Economics (m/c 144), University of Illinois at Chicago, 601 South Morgan Street, Chicago, IL 60607-7121, USA;
fjc@uic.edu

ABSTRACT

Objective: To examine tobacco company documents to determine what the companies knew about the impact of cigarette prices on smoking among youth, young adults, and adults, and to evaluate how this understanding affected their pricing and price related marketing strategies.

Methods: Data for this study come from tobacco industry documents contained in the Youth and Marketing database created by the Roswell Park Cancer Institute and available through http:// roswell.tobaccodocuments.org, supplemented with documents obtained from http://www.tobaccodocuments.org.

Results: Tobacco company documents provide clear evidence on the impact of cigarette prices on cigarette smoking, describing how tax related and other price increases lead to significant reductions in smoking, particularly among young persons. This information was very important in developing the industry’s pricing strategies, including the development of lower price branded generics and the pass through of cigarette excise tax increases, and in developing a variety of price related marketing efforts, including multi-pack discounts, couponing, and others.

Conclusions: Pricing and price related promotions are among the most important marketing tools employed by tobacco companies. Future tobacco control efforts that aim to raise prices and limit price related marketing efforts are likely to be important in achieving reductions in tobacco use and the public health toll caused by tobacco.

Tobacco Industry Manipulation Research Paper

Tobacco Control 2002;11:94-104

RESEARCH PAPER

Tobacco Industry Manipulation of the hospitality industry to maintain smoking in public places

J V Dearlove, S A Bialous, S A Glantz

Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, Institute for Health Policy Studies, Cardiovascular Research Institute, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA

Correspondence to:

Stanton A Glantz, PhD, Box 0103, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143-0130, USA;
glantz@medicine.ucsf.edu Objective: To describe how the tobacco industry used the “accommodation” message to mount an aggressive and effective worldwide campaign to recruit hospitality associations, such as restaurant associations, to serve as the tobacco industry’s surrogate in fighting against smoke-free environments.

Methods: We analysed tobacco industry documents publicly available on the internet as a result of litigation in the USA. Documents were accessed between January and November 2001.

Results: The tobacco industry, led by Philip Morris, made financial contributions to existing hospitality associations or, when it did not find an association willing to work for tobacco interests, created its own “association” in order to prevent the growth of smoke-free environments. The industry also used hospitality associations as a vehicle for programmes promoting “accommodation” of smokers and non-smokers, which ignore the health risks of second hand smoke for employees and patrons of hospitality venues.

Conclusion: Through the myth of lost profits, the tobacco industry has fooled the hospitality industry into embracing expensive ventilation equipment, while in reality 100% smoke-free laws have been shown to have no effect on business revenues, or even to improve them. The tobacco industry has effectively turned the hospitality industry into its de facto lobbying arm on clean indoor air. Public health advocates need to understand that, with rare exceptions, when they talk to organised restaurant associations they are effectively talking to the tobacco industry and must act accordingly.