IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0036487.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fiscal and Policy Implications of Selling Pipe Tobacco for Roll-Your-Own Cigarettes in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel S Morris
  • Michael A Tynan

Abstract

Background: The Federal excise tax was increased for tobacco products on April 1, 2009. While excise tax rates prior to the increase were the same for roll-your-own (RYO) and pipe tobacco, the tax on pipe tobacco was $21.95 per pound less than the tax on RYO tobacco after the increase. Subsequently, tobacco manufacturers began labeling loose tobacco as pipe tobacco and marketing these products to RYO consumers at a lower price. Retailers refer to these products as “dual purpose" or “dual use" pipe tobacco. Methods: Data on tobacco tax collections comes from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. Joinpoint software was used to identify changes in sales trends. Estimates were generated for the amount of pipe tobacco sold for RYO use and for Federal and state tax revenue lost through August 2011. Results: Approximately 45 million pounds of pipe tobacco has been sold for RYO use from April 2009 to August 2011, lowering state and Federal revenue by over $1.3 billion. Conclusions: Marketing pipe tobacco as “dual purpose" and selling it for RYO use provides an opportunity to avoid paying higher cigarette prices. This blunts the public health impact excise tax increases would otherwise have on reducing tobacco use through higher prices. Selling pipe tobacco for RYO use decreases state and Federal revenue and also avoids regulations on flavored tobacco, banned descriptors, prohibitions on shipping, and reporting requirements.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel S Morris & Michael A Tynan, 2012. "Fiscal and Policy Implications of Selling Pipe Tobacco for Roll-Your-Own Cigarettes in the United States," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(5), pages 1-5, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0036487
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0036487
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0036487
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0036487&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0036487?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. DeCicca, Philip & Kenkel, Donald & Liu, Feng, 2013. "Excise tax avoidance: The case of state cigarette taxes," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 1130-1141.
    2. Shelley, D. & Cantrell, M.J. & Moon-Howard, J. & Ramjohn, D.Q. & VanDevanter, N., 2007. "The $5 man: The underground economic response to a large cigarette tax increase in New York City," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 97(8), pages 1483-1488.
    3. Stehr, Mark, 2005. "Cigarette tax avoidance and evasion," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 277-297, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Burguillo, Mercedes & Romero-Jordán, Desiderio & Sanz-Sanz, José-Félix, 2019. "Efficacy of the tobacco tax policy in the presence of product heterogeneity: A pseudo-panel approach applied to Spain," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(10), pages 924-931.
    2. David Zendle & Rachel Meyer & Nick Ballou, 2020. "The changing face of desktop video game monetisation: An exploration of exposure to loot boxes, pay to win, and cosmetic microtransactions in the most-played Steam games of 2010-2019," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(5), pages 1-13, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James E. Prieger, 2023. "Tax noncompliance: The role of tax morale in smokers' behavior," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(4), pages 653-673, October.
    2. DeCicca, Philip & Kenkel, Donald & Liu, Feng, 2013. "Excise tax avoidance: The case of state cigarette taxes," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 1130-1141.
    3. Christian Ben Lakhdar & Nicolas Gérard Vaillant & François-Charles Wolff, 2016. "Does smoke cross the border? Cigarette tax avoidance in France," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 17(9), pages 1073-1089, December.
    4. James M. Bishop, 2018. "Does Cigarette Smuggling Prop Up Smoking Rates?," American Journal of Health Economics, MIT Press, vol. 4(1), pages 80-104, Winter.
    5. Bishop, James, 2015. "Interacting effects of state cigarette taxes on smoking participation," MPRA Paper 66609, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. James E. Prieger & Jonathan Kulick, 2018. "Cigarette Taxes And Illicit Trade In Europe," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 56(3), pages 1706-1723, July.
    7. Kevin Callison & Robert Kaestner, 2014. "Do Higher Tobacco Taxes Reduce Adult Smoking? New Evidence Of The Effect Of Recent Cigarette Tax Increases On Adult Smoking," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(1), pages 155-172, January.
    8. Lance S. Ballester & Amy H. Auchincloss & Lucy F. Robinson & Stephanie L. Mayne, 2017. "Exploring Impacts of Taxes and Hospitality Bans on Cigarette Prices and Smoking Prevalence Using a Large Dataset of Cigarette Prices at Stores 2001–2011, USA," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-15, March.
    9. Howard Chernick & David Merriman, 2013. "Using Littered Pack Data to Estimate Cigarette Tax Avoidance in Nyc," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 66(3), pages 635-668, June.
    10. Lesley Chiou & Erich Muehlegger, 2014. "Consumer Response to Cigarette Excise Tax Changes," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 67(3), pages 621-650, September.
    11. Ciccarelli, Carlo & De Fraja, Gianni & Vuri, Daniela, 2021. "Effects of passive smoking on prenatal and infant development: Lessons from the past," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).
    12. Philip DeCicca & Donald Kenkel & Feng Liu, 2015. "Reservation Prices: An Economic Analysis of Cigarette Purchases on Indian Reservations," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 68(1), pages 93-118, March.
    13. Pesko, Michael F. & Baum, Christopher F., 2016. "The self-medication hypothesis: Evidence from terrorism and cigarette accessibility," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 94-102.
    14. Hansen, Benjamin & Miller, Keaton & Weber, Caroline, 2020. "Federalism, partial prohibition, and cross-border sales: Evidence from recreational marijuana," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    15. Keaton Miller & Boyoung Seo, 2021. "The Effect of Cannabis Legalization on Substance Demand and Tax Revenues," National Tax Journal, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(1), pages 107-145.
    16. Lee, Daeyong, 2018. "Impact of the excise tax on firm R&D and performance in the medical device industry: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(5), pages 854-871.
    17. Adel Bosch & Steven F. Koch, 2014. "Using a Natural Experiment to Examine Tobacco Tax Regressivity," Working Papers 201424, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    18. Johansson, Per & Pekkarinen, Tuomas & Verho, Jouko, 2014. "Cross-border health and productivity effects of alcohol policies," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 125-136.
    19. Philip DeCicca & Donald Kenkel & Feng Liu, 2013. "Who Pays Cigarette Taxes? The Impact of Consumer Price Search," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 516-529, May.
    20. Beatty, Timothy K.M. & Larsen, Erling Røed & Sommervoll, Dag Einar, 2009. "Driven to drink: Sin taxes near a border," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1175-1184, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0036487. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.