{"id":46,"date":"2019-03-22T00:00:28","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T00:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cgr-and-is\/?p=46"},"modified":"2019-03-22T00:00:28","modified_gmt":"2019-03-22T00:00:28","slug":"the-tobacco-industry-plays-price-games-to-make-it-even-tougher-to-quit-smoking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/cgr-and-is\/2019\/03\/22\/the-tobacco-industry-plays-price-games-to-make-it-even-tougher-to-quit-smoking\/","title":{"rendered":"The tobacco industry plays price games to make it even tougher to quit smoking"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Cash tray.
\nShutterstock<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

J. Robert Branston<\/a>, University of Bath<\/a><\/em>; Anna Gilmore<\/a>, University of Bath<\/a><\/em>, and Rosemary Hiscock<\/a>, University of Bath<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It is thought about two in three smokers<\/a> want to kick their deadly habit, and with good reason \u2013 the same proportion of them are believed to die prematurely<\/a> because of smoking. Around the world, the habit kills more than 6m<\/a> people a year.<\/p>\n

Yet quitting is notoriously difficult. Smoking tobacco is an addictive habit<\/a> that the UK Royal College of Physicians has likened<\/a> to heroin and cocaine addiction.<\/p>\n

But this doesn\u2019t mean there is nothing we can do. The evidence suggests<\/a> that increases in tobacco taxation are the most effective means of reducing tobacco use. These taxes, recommended by the World Health Organization<\/a> and the World Bank<\/a>, increase the price of tobacco products in shops, reducing their affordability \u2013 a situation which encourages smokers to quit, and deters others from starting in the first place.<\/p>\n

Taxation is particularly important because lower income smokers are less likely to respond<\/a> to many other anti-tobacco campaigns and regulations intended to encourage quitting. Yet such smokers, including many young people, are the most sensitive to price increases.<\/p>\n

If addiction alone wasn\u2019t enough, an added challenge for kicking the habit is that tobacco companies simply don\u2019t want smokers to quit. They don\u2019t want to lose their customers and the substantial profits they provide.<\/p>\n

It is therefore unsurprising that the tobacco industry has a well-documented history<\/a> of undermining regulations that seek to control the use and sale of tobacco for the benefit of public health. For instance, the largest tobacco companies have continued to market cigarettes to children across the globe <\/a> despite claiming not to do so, and often in places where advertising is banned<\/a>. In the UK, where tobacco advertising is banned, Philip Morris International has effectively circumvented the ban with its recently launched \u201cstop smoking\u201d campaign<\/a> which actually still promotes its tobacco products.<\/p>\n

Paying a heavy price<\/h2>\n

While many of these tactics are obvious, some are harder to detect. Our latest research<\/a> exposes another \u2013 how the tobacco industry\u2019s pricing tactics in the UK minimise the intended public health impact of tobacco tax increases.<\/p>\n

Tobacco companies offer a range of cheaper products to help keep people smoking (and entice new consumers to start) while also offering a suite of higher priced brands to really cash in on those unable or unwilling to quit.<\/p>\n

When tobacco taxes are increased, they play with their pricing to undermine the impacts of the tax increases on smoking. They absorb the tax increases, particularly on the cheapest brands, delaying and staggering the intended tobacco price rises. In this way, price increases are applied gradually to their portfolio of brands to ensure smokers never face a sudden quit-inducing price jump when the government increases taxes.<\/p>\n

Further tactics adopted by the industry include shrinkflation<\/a> \u2013 cutting the number of cigarettes in a pack to disguise price rises and prevent the cost of a packet of tobacco being tipped over certain psychological levels.<\/p>\n

Reducing the number of cigarettes in a pack from 20 to 19, 18 or even 17, while keeping the price stable means the higher cost per cigarette isn\u2019t immediately obvious to most smokers \u2013 and the producer can make greater profits.<\/p>\n

The industry also used price marked packaging to limit the ability of retailers to increase their small mark-up on tobacco sales as a further way of keeping tobacco cheap. Sales of ten-cigarette packs increased and very small packs of loose tobacco (10g or less) were introduced. These small packets appeal to the most price sensitive smokers as they cost less to buy.<\/p>\n

Such tactics and small packs have recently been banned in the UK<\/a> with the introduction of standardised packaging<\/a> (where tobacco has to be sold in a standardised format with drab packaging) but are still available elsewhere. The UK has also introduced<\/a> a new minimum excise tax which puts the average price at over \u00a310 for a packet of 20 cigarettes<\/a>) stopping the sale of ultra cheap mainstream tobacco products.<\/p>\n