Nicotine, tobacco and social justice: Researchers find flavor restrictions affect buyers differently

The experimental tobacco marketplace is an online amazon like tobacco store where participants can use an experimental budget to purchase tobacco nicotine products under different policy scenarios that can be manipulated by the experimenter? This was a fascinating study where we got a large online sample of individuals who are cigarette smokers from different socioeconomic status backgrounds. And we looked at the impact of a couple of different policies. What happens if we have a menthol ban on cigarettes? What happens if we add to that menthol ban a ban on flavors e cigarettes. Racial and ethnic minorities or those who have lower levels of education and income, disproportionately experience tobacco related disease burden and illness. We are motivated to collaborate with the promotion of more actable policies by understanding and being able to inform policymakers on how potential policies will differentially affect these groups. What we found was that cigarette flavor restrictions alone may decrease disparities with individuals of lower socioeconomic status purchasing less cigarettes and more cigarettes in medicinal nicotine. However, the combination of flavor restrictions on both cigarettes and e cigarettes would not decrease current observed disparities. I think we are really motivated to help policymakers to promote equity by informing them, you know, this specific policy, will increase or we will decrease disparities.