• Media type: E-Book
  • Title: Are Menthol Smokers Different? An Economic Perspective
  • Contributor: Cheng, Yu-Chun [VerfasserIn]; Kenkel, Donald Scott [VerfasserIn]; Mathios, Alan D. [VerfasserIn]; Wang, Hua [VerfasserIn]
  • Corporation: National Bureau of Economic Research
  • imprint: Cambridge, Mass: National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2022
  • Published in: NBER working paper series ; no. w30286
  • Extent: 1 Online-Ressource; illustrations (black and white)
  • Language: English
  • Keywords: Tabakwaren ; Zigarette ; Rauchen ; Verhalten ; USA ; Health Behavior ; Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health ; Arbeitspapier ; Graue Literatur
  • Reproduction note: Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: Of the 45.7 million current smokers in the U.S. age 12 and over, more than 18.5 million usually smoke menthol cigarettes. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently proposed a tobacco product standard that would prohibit menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes (FDA 2022b). Although menthol is not harmful per se, the FDA concludes that the prohibition of menthol in cigarettes is appropriate for public health, meeting the criterion established by the 2009 Tobacco Control Act for FDA regulation of tobacco products. In this paper we explore whether menthol smokers are different in ways that provide an applied welfare economics rationale to prohibit menthol. In national data from the 2018-2019 Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey (TUS-CPS), after controlling for socio-demographics, we mainly find small associations between menthol use and smoking behaviors, many quitting behaviors, and cigarette purchase behaviors. Although menthol use is much more common among Black smokers, Blacks are less likely to be current smokers, and conditional on current smoking Blacks are less likely to be daily smokers, are less likely to have started smoking before age 18, smoke fewer cigarettes per day, and are less likely to be addicted. In data from a 2021 Cornell Online Survey, we find no evidence that menthol smokers are less informed or are more likely to experience smoking-related internalities. Our analysis of stated preference data suggests that menthol and non-menthol smokers have similar preferences over tobacco product attributes, except that menthol smokers have a stronger preference for flavored e-cigarettes. In a potentially important exception to the patterns just described, in the 2018-2019 TUS-CPS data we find evidence that among ever smokers, menthol smokers and Black smokers are less likely to be lifetime quitters
  • Access State: Open Access