'Curbing the epidemic: Governments and the economics of tobacco control'[1], World Bank, Washington DC, 1999, pp. 37–45 and C Gallet and J List, 'Cigarette demand: meta-analysis of elasticities'[2], Health Economics, 12/10, 2003, pp. 821–835.

According to a systematic review of studies of tobacco elasticities the average price elasticity for teenagers was -1.43 and -0.76 for young adults. As such, a 10% increase in tobacco price could be expected to decrease the tobacco consumption of teenagers by around 14%, and that of young adults by around 7.6%.

[1] http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/914041468176678949...

[2] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hec.765/abstract

Smoking has been gradually phased out here over the course of 30 years. It used to be that around 40% of adults smoked, and now it's down to 10-12%. If you think that smoking rates haven't changed significantly here over the past few decades, you're either very young or very blinkered.

Or just listen to smokers complaining how they're a dying breed (works on two levels, that one), or how you can't just ask anyone for a light anymore as fewer people carry lighters, and how bumming a cigarette off a stranger is no longer commonplace now that cigs are over a buck each.

I'm not questioning that smoking rates have dropped. That's absolutely true, and an easily verifiable fact. What I'm questioning is the assertion that higher taxes on cigarettes have been the primary cause of this reduction in the smoking rate. It's important that we carefully account for all the factors at play and arrive at a considered answer. If we do this, we then know the most effective way to combat, and hopefully one day, eliminate, smoking.

It really kills me that there seems to be a lot of lazy thinking around this subject. It has for a number of years, in fact. I hope this isn't taken as an 'appeal to authority' argument, but I'm an economist who has worked in tax policy for a number of years, during which time I actually advised a couple of Australian Prime Ministers and their Cabinets on excise tax. I'm not trying to be a contrarian here. If people know what is and is not effective, then they are in a better position to pressure their elected representatives to take effective measures to combat smoking.

Social pressure probably dominates the total cause of smoking reduction, I would bet. I personally won't join a friend outside a bar for their smoke: it's cold and I hate the smell, I'll stay in here thanks. Also a lot of people actively find smoking and smokers disgusting, which eats away at the "cool" factor it used to have.

I think that the banning of smoking in clubs, pubs, and cafes had a significant effect. Now if you want to smoke you need to leave all your friends who don't smoke leave the club and then queue to get back in.

Doing this makes you feel like an outsider to your own friendship group. I know the clubs complained bitterly that it lowered their revenue.

I'm a very happy non-smoker but I would think that the biggest reason for smokers to stop nowadays is the leper colony stigma aspect.

I would think that smokers (rightfully) feel like a shunned minority when they are told to smoke in alleys far away from the general population.

They have to make a special effort to go somewhere to smoke because they can no longer light up at a restaurant or while they're doing errands.

It's hard to pretend you're "cool" when you're standing by yourself and society doesn't want you anywhere near them.

So there's no coolness and no convenience.

While I applaud your scientific rigor, why not do everything that might work and leave it at that?

As far as I am concerned, a cigarette tax should stand until proven harmful, not only if proven beneficial.

The smoking rate has dropped down to nearly single digits. They exact cause is impossible to tell.

You know what? Screw it. Believe whatever you want.