In a study of adolescents who, when first interviewed, had never engaged in smoking, Pierce and colleagues found at the 3-year followup that having a favorite cigarette advertisement as well as possessing or being willing to use a tobacco promotional item at the initial interview predicted either future smoking or the increased likelihood of trying tobacco.
Unger and Chen reported that the age of smoking initiation occurred earlier among adolescents who had a favorite tobacco advertisement, had received tobacco promotional items, or were willing to use tobacco promotional items.
Research has also shown that awareness of beer commercials among fifth and sixth graders is significantly related to intentions to drink as adults, suggesting that alcohol advertising may influence adolescents to be more favorably disposed to drinking. Therefore, advertising has been found to be a potential risk factor for both smoking and drinking among adolescents.
Economic and Availability Factors Research suggests that adolescent smokers or drinkers are more likely than adults to reduce or quit smoking or drinking in response to increased cigarette or alcohol prices.
Harris and Chan found that 15- to 17-year-olds, compared with 18- to 20-year-olds, were more likely to respond to an increase in cigarette prices by quitting smoking rather than by reducing the number of cigarettes they smoked per day.
Grossman and colleagues reported price elasticities of demand for cigarettes of -1.20 for 12- to 17-year-olds and -0.15 for people older than age 35, meaning that a 10-percent increase in the price of cigarettes would lower per capita consumption for these two populations by 12 and 1.5 percent, respectively. Other research suggests that a 10-percent increase in cigarette prices would reduce the number of teens who smoke by 7 percent.
Alcohol use by young people is also more sensitive to price than drinking among adults. In one study, the price elasticity of demand for heavy drinking was -0.92 for people age 18 and older, compared with -2.24 for those between ages 18 and 21.
The authors suggest that adults respond more to increases in the potential future costs or consequences of smoking and drinking, whereas young people are more sensitive to increases in price, because future costs are less important to them and young people have more stringent budget constraints than do adults.
College students, however, may be less responsive to alcohol prices than are other groups of young people.
Chaloupka and Wechsler examined drinking data from 17,000 college students in relation to beer prices and drunk driving laws in the locations of the participating colleges.
The results suggested that college students were less responsive to alcohol prices than were other groups but that more severe drunk driving penalties tended to reduce both drinking and binge drinking. These effects were found among underage and older students, both male and female.
