Another consideration when analyzing price effects on alcohol consumption is the potentially addictive nature of alcohol. Next to cigarette smoking, excessive drinking is the most common example of legally consuming an addictive substance. However, alcohol and tobacco are linked to adverse health outcomes and to addiction in different ways. For example, overwhelming evidence indicates that any level of smoking has detrimental health effects. Furthermore, a large proportion of smokers become addicted to nicotine and therefore smoke a substantial quantity of cigarettes each day. Accordingly, researchers can usually focus their analyses on whether and how much a person smokes because these measures are highly correlated with the smoking-related costs of interest.
