The Impact of Tobacco Regulations on Smoking and Vaping

The 2009 Tobacco Control Act granted the Food and Drug Administration broad authority to regulate cigarettes and other tobacco products, which was further expanded in 2016 to include e‐cigarettes. To study the impact of FDA tobacco regulations, we designed and conducted a discrete choice experiment to collect data on adult subjects' stated preferences for cigarettes, e‐cigarettes, and quitting. We find evidence that enacted, pending, and potential FDA regulations may have important influences on adult smokers' choices. We estimate that when the long‐delayed requirement of cigarette graphic warning labels is implemented, it could decrease the probability that adult smokers choose cigarettes by 5.30 percentage points. However, our results suggest that recent policy trends towards tighter regulation of e‐cigarettes might work in the opposite direction. We estimate that the FDA‐required warning label on e‐cigarettes increases the probability of cigarette choices by 1.9 percentage points. Based on the estimated effect of a flavor ban, our results suggest that full enforcement of FDA marketing denial orders for almost all flavored e‐cigarettes could increase the probability of cigarette choices by 2.8 percentage points. Finally, raising e‐cigarette prices mainly moves respondents away from e‐cigarettes towards combustible cigarettes rather than to attempting to quit tobacco products altogether.