On kids and cigarettes and Bush propaganda.
Submitted by Robert P. on Fri, 10/12/2007 - 9:11am
The DHHS group Substance and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is crowing about the rate of retailers violating the law by selling cigarettes to juveniles being down to a new low. There is an inference here, at least in my reading of it, that this relates to juvenile smoking. That lowering this rate means less teens smoking. In fact, that is exactly how they describe it in their press release.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration today announced that sales of tobacco to underage youth have reached all time lows under the Synar Amendment program – a federal and state partnership program aimed at ending illegal tobacco sales to minors.
Now, I highlighted the Synar Amendment because they make the case that it is responsible for the decrease in retailer violations, which leads to decreased juvenile smoking. Maybe the Synar Amendment had something to do with this, but I'll offer another opinion after the break.
From the press release, we find out what the Synar program is, kinda:
Under the regulations implementing the Synar Amendment, states and jurisdictions must report annually to SAMHSA on their retailer violation rates, which represent the percentage of inspected retail outlets that sold tobacco products to a customer under the age of 18. The amendment requires that retailer violation rates not exceed 20 percent. States and jurisdictions measure their progress through random, unannounced inspections of tobacco retailers, and SAMHSA provides technical assistance to help states comply.
So, the Bush administration wants you to believe that the drop in smoking rates is due to a law that requires states to say how many violations they've had? Now, certainly there is a stick associated with this program:
States that do not comply with the requirements set forth in the Amendment are subject to a penalty of 40 percent of their Federal Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment (SAPT) Block Grant funding.
But, that doesn't CAUSE anything. What results in a decrease in juvenile smoking is what the states do to stop it. And, what have they done that has so markedly stopped juvenile smoking?
- Making the legal age 18 in all states, that could be seen as a big deal.
- Having random inspections of sale sites (although one wonders how often this occurs, anybody?). I can't even find out who is responsible, but I'll keep digging.
And, that's it. That is how they propose that the massive reduction has occurred, a reduction from 40% to 10%. Wow, education really works. Makes you think we should be doing more sex education right?
Well, I have another possibility.
This is the decrease in retailer violations.
This is a great graph from the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
You can see here that the decrease in smoking goes right along with the increase in TAXES. Yes, folks, taxing cigarettes works.
A joint study from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research matched price hikes with teen smoking rates over six years. They found that a 10% price increase would decrease the number of children who started to smoke between 3% and 10%, depending on their stage of smoking, such as experimentation, beginning daily smoking, or relatively heavy daily smoking.
"More states that haven't (raised taxes) should do so. This will stop tax-skirting smuggling of cigarettes from low-tax to high-tax states and discourage youth smoking," Todd said.
More.
The CDC:
The CDC report attributed the drop in cigarette use to three things:
* A 70% increase in the retail price of cigarettes between December 1997 and May 2001
* Increases in school-based efforts to prevent tobacco use
* Increases in youth exposure to both state and national mass media campaigns."When the tobacco companies lost the lawsuit that made them pay for the disease tobacco has caused, they passed the costs of their legal problems on to smokers, raising the cost of cigarettes out of the reach of many young people," said Ron Todd, director of tobacco control for the American Cancer Society (ACS).
This is a little-discussed fact. If you look at the increase in cost of cigarettes versus the increase in taxes, you see this.
I guess we should be thanking the tobacco companies for being so greedy, they are costing themselves right out of their key demographic - young, impressionable children.
What I hope you take away from this is simple: Cigarette tax good, Bush administration misrepresentations bad.
There is one more thing I guess, North Carolina, not in such great shape.
Today the Branch released preliminary findings from the 2003 N.C. Youth Tobacco Survey (NC YTS), which show that across North Carolina current cigarette use among middle school students (grades 6-8) has dropped 38% since 1999, from 15.0% (1999) to 11.3% (2001), and finally to 9.3% (2003) in the most recent survey. “Unfortunately, high school current cigarette use was 27.3% in the 2003 survey, which is not significantly lower than 2001 or 1999,” Malek said.
Wow, I'm so happy that only 1 out of 10 MIDDLE SCHOOLERS is smoking. But, I guess it is better than the 1 out of 4 high schoolers who are on their way to a lifetime of debilitating disease.
Trackback URL for this post:
http://bluenc.com/trackback/7855
- Robert P.'s blog
- Login or register to post comments
Up on Daily Kos.
Link.
One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Great post.
Too bad so many of our Congresscritters just don't get it.
"If boiling people alive best served the interests of the American people, then it would neither be moral or immoral." Max Borders, Civitas Institute
In what will likely be a wildly unpopular comment
I'll say that it's distinctly inappropriate to tax one group of taxpayers to pay for benefits to be provided to all. (I'm well aware of the health hazards of tobacco. There are other addictions and afflictions equally as damaging to both individuals and our society. I've never yet heard of a driver drunk on tobacco running over someone in their tobacco induced stupor. Nor do tobacco addicts typically rob and kill others to feed their habit.)
That said, I certainly support SCHIP...Just not the funding methodology.
I smoke. Have for a long time. quit off and on several times. may do so again. I respect other's feelings and don't smoke around non-smokers nor do I even smoke inside my own home.
20% of the adults in this country use tobacco. Lets say that equates to 45 Mil people...divided into $35 Billion is an additional $800 in taxes per user.
That's simply not right.
SE NC Dems
Weighing in on JLF response.
Here.
There are a couple things I would say. First, Joseph's interpretation is correct, the scales are different and thus don't really show what I was looking for. I would say the the following:
1. The decrease in total cigarette smoking over the last FIFTEEN years has not actually been all that dramatic, if you compare it to the last fifty years. The "current" rate was over 40% in 1965, which greatly decreased until the 90s. If you look at high school kids, in the table below under "Current" you can see that there has been a dramatic decrease since 1999, while there was as dramatic increase from 1991 to 1999.
The Synar amendment cannot be responsible for this up and down. In fact, I'll just go ahead and admit that taxes can't be solely responsible either, it's a combination of factors. However:
2. The UM study showing that a 10% increase in price (about 30cents now) leads to a 3-10% drop in usage among youths.
3. The CDC report suggesting that increase in cost was one of the major contributing factors to the recent decrease in cigarette usage.
4. Cigarette taxes are at a comparative historic low.
5. Anyone who thinks that having cigarettes be $4.00 a pack instead of $2.00 a pack doesn't cut down on smoking has too much money.
6. I agree with Joseph, the graph I previously published does show part of the problem, government becomes "addicted" to cigarette taxes and uses them for the wrong reasons. Cigarettes harm our health, the health of our neighbors and the health of our state farming community. They should be used to repair that health, only.
One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A couple of thoughts
Thank you for this interesting post. As to the last graph comparing the cost per pack versus taxes. You should note that in 1998 big tobacco entered into an agreement with the States wherein the States are paid large sums of money each year. This agreement known as the Master Settlement Agreement led to an immediate price increase of 45 cents per pack. Increases in cost have continued since 1998 as the Master Settlement Agreement has inflation adjusters in it. The recent tobacco buyout program has also led to increased costs of cigarettes as big tobacco pays for that buy out off their customers. So while I don't doubt the greed of corporations, there are many non-revenue generating reasons why sales price increased without traditional tax increases.
Increasing the cost of cigarettes does have some effect on cigarette purchasing, but most studies I have seen suggest that recent reductions in consumption correlate much closer to other factors. In fact one study found price increases cause an effective deterrent to consumption only for people who can afford the price increase. Economically disadvantaged smokers don't quit and end up bearing a disproportionate share of the increased tax.
Synar Amendment enforcement (which I believe is the responsibility of the ALE in NC), education, cost, and advertising bans through the MSA all play an important role in reducing the number of young people from starting to smoke. Whether any one of these tools alone could have the same effect is doubtful.