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28 Aug 2018

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Question:

Explain whether, and if so, you would expect laws that prohibit smoking in public places to affect the quantity of ciarettes traded in the market.

ARTICLE: Two ways to reduce the quantity of smoking demanded

Public policymakers often want to reduce the amount that people smoke because of smoking's adverse health affects. There are two ways that policy can attempt to achive this goal.

One way to reduce smoking is to shift the demand curve for cigarettes and other tobacco products. Public service announcements, mandatory health warnings on cigarette packets and the prohibition of cigarette advertising are all policies aimed at reducing the quantity of cigarettes demanded at any given price. If successful, these policies shift the demand curve or cigareetes to the left.

Alternatively, policymakers can try to raise the price of cigarettes. If the government taxes the anufacture of cigarettes, for example. cigarette companies pass much of this ta on to consumers in the form of higher prices. A higher price encourages smokers to reduce the amount of cigarettes they smoke. In this case, the reduced amount of smoking does not represent a shift in the demand curve. Instead, it represents a movement along the same demand curve to a point with a higher price and lwoer quantity.

How much does the amount of smoking respond to changes in the price of cigarettes? Economists have attempted to answer this question by studying what happens when the tax on cigarettes changes. They have found that a 10 per cent increase in the price causes a 4 per cent reduction in the quantity demanded. Teenagers are found to be especially sensitive to the price of cigarettes - a 10 per cent increasen in the price causes a 12 per cent drop in teenage smoking.

A related question is how the price of cigarettes affects the demand for illicit drugs, such as marijuana. Opponents of cigarette taxes often argue that tobacco and marijuana are substitutes, so that high cigarette prices encourages marijuana use. By contrast, many experts on substance abuse view tobacco as a 'gateway drug' leading the young to experiment with other harmful substances. Most studies of the data are consistent with this view - they find that high cigarette prices are associated with reduced use of marijuana. In other words, tobacco and marijuana appear to be complements rather than substitutes.

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Tod Thiel
Tod ThielLv2
29 Aug 2018

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