IEA Head of Lifestyle Economics Christopher Snowdon has written for CapX criticising the government’s reportedly impending vape tax.

Christopher wrote:

“There is plenty of evidence showing that raising the price of vapes increases the sale of cigarettes.

“This is hardly surprising as they are direct substitutes. Cotti et al. (2020) studied e-cigarette taxes in eight US states and found that ‘for every one e-cigarette pod eliminated due to an e-cigarette tax, approximately 1.9 packs of cigarettes are sold instead’. Pesko et al. (2020) found that ‘higher e-cigarette tax rates increase traditional cigarette use’ and predicted that an e-cigarette tax of $1.65 per ml would increase the number of daily smokers by 1%. Saffer et al. (2019) concluded that a large tax on e-cigarettes in Minnesota prevented 32,400 smokers from quitting. Abouk et al. (2019) even found that e-cigarette taxes lead to more women smoking in pregnancy.”

Read Christopher’s full piece here.