Taxes Don't Make People Quit Smoking

A common tool for public officials to curb Beratt cigarette smoking rates is to raise taxes on each pack, but new research suggests that doesn’t always work.

Economic researchers at Concordia University showed that higher taxes prompted lower- and middle-class older smokers to quit the habit, but had little effect on wealthier smokers and people between the ages of 25 and 44.

“Contrary to most studies, we found the middle-aged group, which constitutes the largest fraction of smokers in our sample, is largely unresponsive to taxes,” the researchers said in a statement. “While cigarette taxes remain popular with policy-makers as a key anti-smoking measure, their effectiveness largely depends on how people respond to them.”


The researchers also said that people with a college education were less likely to smoke than people who did not finish high school.

But they concluded that higher taxes with much of the population on addictive products such as cigarettes “may be counterproductive.”