• Nathan J Doogan, Mary Ellen Wewers, and Micah Berman.
• College of Public Health, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA.
• Tob Control. 2018 Mar 1; 27 (2): 203-208.

BackgroundIncreasing cigarette prices reduce cigarette use. The US Food and Drug Administration has the authority to regulate the sale and promotion-and therefore the price-of tobacco products.ObjectiveTo examine the potential effect of federal minimum price regulation on the sales of cigarettes in the USA.MethodWe used yearly state-level data from the Tax Burden on Tobacco and other sources to model per capita cigarette sales as a function of price. We used the fitted model to compare the status quo sales with counterfactual scenarios in which a federal minimum price was set. The minimum price scenarios ranged from $0 to $12.ResultsThe estimated price effect in our model was comparable with that found in the literature. Our counterfactual analyses suggested that the impact of a minimum price requirement could range from a minimal effect at the $4 level to a reduction of 5.7 billion packs sold per year and 10 million smokers at the $10 level.ConclusionA federal minimum price policy has the potential to greatly benefit tobacco control and public health by uniformly increasing the price of cigarettes and by eliminating many price-reducing strategies currently available to both sellers and consumers.© Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

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