Tobacco & Vaping 101: 50 State Analysis

As lawmakers across the country seek to reduce youth tobacco and vapor product use, many have introduced and passed legislation that regulates, taxes, and in some cases, prohibits the sales of such products.

This analysis includes state specific information on tobacco and vapor product use among adults in youth in all 50 states, as well as Washington D.C. Each paper examines smoking rates among adults in the respective, youth use of tobacco and vapor products, and the effectiveness of tobacco settlement payments, taxes, and vapor products on reducing combustible cigarette use.

Smoking Rates Among Adults
This section provides information on smoking rates among adults from 1995 to 2019, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey. The analysis also figures for population increases, and while all states saw decreases in the percentage of smokers, due to increases in population, some make have additional smokers. This analysis takes into account the percent difference and population change, as all states, absolutely, have less smokers than they would have had in 1995.

Youth Tobacco and Vapor Rates
This section examines the most state level youth vapor and tobacco rates, including identifying ever, current, and daily use. It also provides an analysis on the reduction of youth combustible cigarette use among the years, which, as identified by this series, is at all time lows.

Cigarette Tax Revenue
This section analyzes cigarette tax revenue and increases between 2000 and 2019. The analysis also examines the long-term trends in revenue, finding that while cigarette tax hikes have led to increased revenue in the short-term, these increases are not seen in the long term as smoking rates decline among the youth and adult populations.

Tobacco Settlement Agreements
This section identifies the state lawsuits in the 1990s, in which states sued tobacco companies for Medicaid health care expenses due to smoking-related health issues. The analysis identifies how much tobacco settlement payments the state has collected between 1998 and 2000.

Tobacco Control Funding
This section compares each state’s cigarette tax revenue and tobacco settlement monies to the amount of state funding spent on tobacco control funding, including cessation services, education, and prevention, during a 19-year period. As identified by the analysis, many states, if not all, drastically underfund such programs.

Vapor Product Emergence and Young Adult Smoking Rates
This section seeks to examine the efficacy of e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation tool and analyzed smoking rates among 18- to 24-year-old adults in the 10 years after suing tobacco companies and compares it to smoking rates in the 10 years after e-cigarettes’ market emergence, which is identified in the period between 2009 and 2012. In this 50-state analysis, as well as D.C., 46 states and the District of Columbia, saw greater decreases in smoking rates among young adults in the 10 years after e-cigarette market emergence, compared to the 10 years after tobacco settlement lawsuits. In the four outliers, smoking rates only increased among 18- to 24-year-old adults after policymakers increased scrutiny over e-cigarettes due to youth use.

Policy Implications, Supplemental Graphs and References
The analysis concludes with a section on policy implications, graphs of young adult smoking rates and tobacco monies, and a list of references.