Effect Of Expanding Anti-Tobacco Regulations On The Likelihood Of Being A Smoker

Abstract

Governments across the world have been fighting against tobacco use by introducing a series of anti-tobacco measures to eliminate tobacco-related diseases. After ratifying the first global public health treaty by the World Health Organization in 2005, Turkey urgently implemented a series of anti-smoking policies to address the tobacco epidemic. We utilized data from the Global Adult Tobacco Surveys 2008 and 2012 for Turkey and implemented a Linear Probability Model to estimate the effect of introducing anti-smoking policies to provide new evidence on reducing smoking. Two significant anti-tobacco policies undertaken between 2009 and 2010 had a significant negative impact on the likelihood of being a current smoker. The new policies helped reduce the probability of being smokers for both females and males, but the effect was more substantial for male adults. Education has distinct effects on females and males such that with more education, female adults are more likely to smoke while the opposite is true for male adults. Policymakers should consider these findings to address tobacco consumption and announce multiple policies taking gender differences into account to stop the smoking epidemic.

Keywords

• cigarette consumption
• anti-tobacco regulation
• gender
• smoking behavior