Steering Tax on Children’s Tobacco Consumption

Michael Adams, Universität Hamburg Institut für Recht der Wirtschaft

Abstract

Careers of smokers almost always start in infancy. Therefore, the tobacco industry is confronted with the economic necessity to turn children into addicted smokers. Present efforts to reduce the smoking rate of children remain without sufficient effect, because they miss to change this incentive. The solution is to tax cigarettes smoked by children. Adequately designed this steering tax causes the industry to prevent children from smoking instead of turning them into addicted smokers.