This paper examines the impact of state tobacco control expenditures on individual behavior using the 1985 to 1998 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Surveys (BRFSS), sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The advantage of using the BRFSS is that it allows us to model how individual smoking behavior responds to tobacco control programs. We focus our analysis on young adults ages 18 to 24. This age group is of interest because it is at these ages that smoking patterns become more established. Also, tobacco advertising efforts are apparently now targeting this age group as a result of restrictions on marketing to teens. This analysis complements the many individual state studies that show declines in smoking as a result of tobacco control programs. This analysis strengthens these individual state analyses in three ways: 1.) it controls for individual socio-demographic characteristics, 2.) it makes use of variation in tobacco control expenditures across state and time to identify the impact of expenditures on smoking and 3.) it controls for the effects of cigarette prices and taxes. We find that increases in expenditures on tobacco control programs decrease the prevalence of smoking and have modest effects on the number of cigarettes consumed by smokers.
Learning Objectives: 1.) Discuss measures of tobacco control program impacts 2.) Articulate the effects of increased spending on tobacco control on individual tobacco use 3.) Develop tobacco control programs to impact smoking
Keywords: Tobacco Control, Evaluation
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.