Cigarette taxes are vital for tobacco control, and available evidence indicates that alcohol and tobacco tend to operate as complements rather than substitutes. However, in contrast to studies that examine the effects of overall tobacco price, few studies have extended cross-price elasticity analyses to examine the specific association of cigarette taxes and alcohol consumption. Extant studies using an adult sample from Taiwan and an adolescent sample from the U.S. provide initial evidence that the public health benefits of cigarette taxation may extend beyond smoking-related outcomes to impact alcohol consumption (Dee, 1999; Lee, 2007; Lee et al., 2010). The current study is the first to utilize data from a large, prospective, population-based sample of U.S. adults to study the association of increases in cigarette taxes with drinking outcomes.
