Archives For vaping

Vapor products, smoking, and harm reduction policies: Recent blog posts

Eric Fruits —  22 October 2018

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:

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.

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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.

 

In Health Care, International Center for Law & Economics, Regulation, Taxes, Truth on the Market , , , , ,
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The political economy of vaping

Dan Mitchell —  19 October 2018

Dan Mitchell is the co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

In an ideal world, the discussion and debate about how (or if) to tax e-cigarettes, heat-not-burn, and other tobacco harm-reduction products would be guided by science. Policy makers would confer with experts, analyze evidence, and craft prudent and sensible laws and regulations.

In the real world, however, politicians are guided by other factors.

There are two things to understand, both of which are based on my conversations with policy staff in Washington and elsewhere.

First, this is a battle over tax revenue. Politicians are concerned that they will lose tax revenue if a substantial number of smokers switch to options such as vaping.

This is very much akin to the concern that electric cars and fuel-efficient cars will lead to a loss of money from excise taxes on gasoline.

In the case of fuel taxes, politicians are anxiously looking at other sources of revenue, such as miles-driven levies. Their main goal is to maintain – or preferably increase – the amount of money that is diverted to the redistributive state so that politicians can reward various interest groups.

In the case of tobacco, a reduction in the number of smokers (or the tax-driven propensity of smokers to seek out black-market cigarettes) is leading politicians to concoct new schemes for taxing e-cigarettes and related non-combustible products.

Second, this is a quasi-ideological fight. Not about capitalism versus socialism, or big government versus small government. It’s basically a fight over paternalism, or a battle over goals.

For all intents and purposes, the question is whether lawmakers should seek to simultaneously discourage both tobacco use and vaping because both carry some risk (and perhaps because both are considered vices for the lower classes)? Or should they welcome vaping since it leads to harm reduction as smokers shift to a dramatically safer way of consuming nicotine?

In statistics, researchers presumably always recognize the dangers of certain types of mistakes, known as Type I errors (also known as a “false positive”) and Type II errors (also known as a “false negative”).

How does this relate to smoking, vaping, and taxes?

Simply stated, both sides of the fight are focused on a key goal and secondary issues are pushed aside. In other words, tradeoffs are being ignored.

The advocates of high taxes on e-cigarettes and other non-combustible products are fixated on the possibility that vaping will entice some people into the market. Maybe vaping wil even act as a gateway to smoking. So, they want high taxes on vaping, akin to high taxes on tobacco, even though the net result is that this leads many smokers to stick with cigarettes instead of making a switch to less harmful products.

On the other side of the debate are those focused on overall public health. They see emerging non-combustible products as very effective ways of promoting harm reduction. Is it possible that e-cigarettes may be tempting to some people who otherwise would never try tobacco? Yes, that’s possible, but it’s easily offset by the very large benefits that accrue as smokers become vapers.

For all intents and purposes, the fight over the taxation of vaping is similar to other ideological fights.

The old joke in Washington is that a conservative is someone who will jail 99 innocent people in order to put one crook in prison and a liberal is someone who will free 99 guilty people to prevent one innocent person from being convicted (or, if you prefer, a conservative will deny 99 poor people to catch one welfare fraudster and a liberal will line the pockets of 99 fraudsters to make sure one genuinely poor person gets money).

The vaping fight hasn’t quite reached this stage, but the battle lines are very familiar. At some point in the future, observers may joke that one side is willing to accept more smoking if one teenager forgoes vaping while the other side is willing to have lots of vapers if it means one less smoker.

Having explained the real drivers of this debate, I’ll close by injecting my two cents and explaining why the paternalists are wrong. But rather than focus on libertarian-type arguments about personal liberty, I’ll rely on three points, all of which are based on conventional cost-benefit analysis and the sensible approach to excise taxation.

  • First, tax policy should focus on incentivizing a switch and not punishing those who chose a less harmful products. The goal should be harm reduction rather than revenue maximization.
  • Second, low tax burdens also translate into lower long-run spending burdens because a shift to vaping means a reduction in overall healthcare costs related to smoking cigarettes.
  • Third, it makes no sense to impose punitive “sin taxes” on behaviors that are much less, well, sinful. There’s a big difference in the health and fiscal impact of cigarettes compared to the alternatives.

One final point is that this issue has a reverse-class-warfare component. Anti-smoking activists generally have succeeded in stigmatizing cigarette consumption and most smokers are now disproportionately from the lower-income community. For better (harm reduction) or worse (elitism), low-income smokers are generally treated with disdain for their lifestyle choices.  

It is not an explicit policy, but that disdain now seems to extend to any form of nicotine consumption, even though the health effects of vaping are vastly lower.

In Regulation, Taxes, Truth on the Market , , , ,
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