USA: price cuts and point of sale ads follow tax rise

Abstract

A number of recent events have drawn attention to the likelihood that pricing and promotional strategies at the point of sale will become even more important to tobacco companies as a way of marketing their products in the United States and may well be used as a strategy to undermine the effects of state tobacco control programmes. In the wake of the master settlement agreement, tobacco companies announced a US$0.45 increase in November 1998 in the price of a pack of cigarettes, a rise of nearly 20% on the average price of a premium brand. Based on this rise, per capita tobacco …