Over the past few weeks, Truth on the Market has had several posts related to harm reduction policies, with a focus on tobacco, e-cigarettes, and other vapor products:
- Vapor products, harm reduction, and taxation: More questions than answers for a young and dynamic product market
- Applying harm reduction to smoking
- The political economy of vaping
- The economic impact of smoke-free air laws on the restaurant and hospitality industries
Harm reduction policies are used to manage a wide range of behaviors including recreational drug use and sexual activity. Needle-exchange programs reduce the spread of infectious diseases among users of heroin and other injected drugs. Opioid replacement therapy substitutes illegal opioids, such as heroin, with a longer acting but less euphoric opioid. Safer sex education and condom distribution in schools are designed to reduce teenage pregnancy and reduce the spread of sexually transmitted infections. None of these harm reduction policies stop the risky behavior, nor do the policies eliminate the potential for harm. Nevertheless, the policies intend to reduce the expected harm.
Carrie Wade, Director of Harm Reduction Policy and Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute, draws a parallel between opiate harm reduction strategies and potential policies related to tobacco harm reduction. She notes that with successful one-year quit rates hovering around 10 percent, harm reduction strategies offer ways to transition more smokers off the most dangerous nicotine delivery device: the combustible cigarette.
Most of the harm from smoking is caused by the inhalation of toxicants released through the combustion of tobacco. Use of non-combustible nicotine delivery systems, such as e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco generally are considered to be significantly less harmful than smoking cigarettes. UK government agency Public Health England has concluded that e-cigarettes are around 95 percent less harmful than combustible cigarettes.
In the New England Journal of Medicine, Fairchild, et al. (2018) identify a continuum of potential policies regarding the regulation of vapor products, such as e-cigarettes, show in the figure below. They note that the most restrictive policies would effectively eliminate e-cigarettes as a viable alternative to smoking, while the most permissive may promote e-cigarette usage and potentially encourage young people—who would not do so otherwise—to take-up e-cigarettes. In between these extremes are policies that may discourage young people from initiating use of e-cigarettes, while encouraging current smokers to switch to less harmful vapor products.
International Center for Law & Economics chief economist, Eric Fruits, notes in his blog post that more than 20 countries have introduced taxation on e-cigarettes and other vapor products. In the United States, several states and local jurisdictions have enacted e-cigarette taxes. His post is based on a recently released ICLE white paper entitled Vapor products, harm reduction, and taxation: Principles, evidence and a research agenda.
Under a harm reduction principle, Fruits argues that e-cigarettes and other vapor products should face no taxes or low taxes relative to conventional cigarettes, to guide consumers toward a safer alternative to smoking.
In contrast to harm reduction principles, the precautionary principle as well as principles of tax equity point toward the taxation of vapor products at rates similar to conventional cigarettes.
On the one hand, some policymakers claim that the objective of taxing nicotine products is to reduce nicotine consumption. On the other hand, Dan Mitchell, co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, points out that some politicians are concerned that they will lose tax revenue if a substantial number of smokers switch to options such as vaping.
Often missed in the policy discussion is the effect of fiscal policies on innovation and the development and commercialization of harm-reducing products. Also, often missed are the consequences for current consumers of nicotine products, including smokers seeking to quit using harmful conventional cigarettes.
Policy decisions regarding taxation of vapor products should take into account both long-term fiscal effects and broader economic and welfare effects. These effects might (or might not) suggest very different tax policies to those that have been enacted or are under consideration. These considerations, however, are frustrated by unreliable and wildly divergent empirical estimates of consumer demand in the face of changing prices and/or rising taxes.
Along the lines of uncertain—if not surprising—impacts Fritz Laux, professor of economics at Northeastern State University, provides an explanation of why smoke-free air laws have not been found to adversely affect revenues or employment in the restaurant and hospitality industries.
He argues that social norms regarding smoking in restaurants have changed to the point that many smokers themselves support bans on smoking in restaurants. In this way, he hypothesizes, smoke-free air laws do not impose a significant constraint on consumer behavior or business activity. We might likewise infer, by extension, that policies which do not prohibit vaping in public spaces (leaving such decisions to the discretion of business owners and managers) could encourage switching by people who otherwise would have to exit buildings in order to vape or smoke—without adversely affecting businesses.
Principles of harm reduction recognize that every policy proposal has uncertain outcomes as well as potential spillovers and unforeseen consequences. With such high risks and costs associated with cigarette and other combustible use, taxes and regulations must be developed in an environment of uncertainty and with an eye toward a net reduction in harm, rather than an unattainable goal of zero harm or in an overt pursuit of tax revenues.