Examination of the association between state tobacco control spending and the demand for electronic cigarettes by high school students

BACKGROUND: While much is known about the influence of tobacco control spending on the demand for conventional cigarettes, little is known about the effects of tobacco control spending on the demand for electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes). This study provides the first evidence on the association between state tobacco control spending and high school student vaping in the USA. METHODS: We used data from the 2015 through 2019 National Youth Risk Behavior Surveys to estimate vaping prevalence and vaping intensity demand equations. We employed logistic regressions to estimate the vaping prevalence equations and generalised linear models with log-link and gamma distribution to estimate the vaping intensity equations. RESULTS: We found evidence that funding for state tobacco control programmes had a significant negative association with both vaping prevalence and vaping intensity among high school students in the USA. Our results indicate that a 50% increase in state spending on tobacco control during the time of the surveys would have been associated with a 7.46% lower high school student vaping prevalence rate than what was observed. CONCLUSIONS: There has been a dramatic increase in e-cigarette use by adolescents and young adults in the USA. The rapid rise in e-cigarette use has been a significant source of public policy concern for many states. The results of this study strongly suggest that increased spending on tobacco control programmes will reduce the number of high school students who vape and will decrease the number of days vaping products are used by high school students. These findings should be extremely valuable to policymakers interested in curbing the youth vaping epidemic in the USA.