Work

Does E-Cigarette Advertising Encourage Adult Smokers to Quit?

Year: 2018

Type: report

Abstract: Only recently introduced into the U.S. market, e-cigarettes have been aggressively promoted, and use is increasing rapidly among both adults and youths.At the heart of the regulatory debate are fundamental questions regarding whether e-cigarettes will draw cigarette smokers away from a dangerous habit or lure new initiates into tobacco use.We provide some of the first causal evidence on whether e-cigarette advertising on television and in magazines (which comprise about 90% of total media spending on e-cigarettes) encourage adult smokers to quit.We find that the answer to this question is a yes for TV advertising but no for magazine advertising.Our results indicate that a policy to ban TV advertising of e-cigarettes would have reduced the number of smokers who quit in the recent past by approximately 3%, resulting in roughly 105,000 fewer quitters in that period.On the other hand, if the FDA were not considering regulations and mandates that would likely eliminate many e-cigarette producers during our sample period, e-cigarette ads might have reached the number of nicotine replacement therapy TV ads during that period.That would have increased the number of smokers who quit by around 10%, resulting in an additional 350,000 quitters.

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

DOI: 10.3386/w24277

Authors: Dhaval Dave, Daniel Dench, Michael Grossman, Donald Kenkel, Henry Saffer