An overlooked market: loose cigarettes, informal vendors and their implications for tobacco taxation.

Objective: To examine the features of markets for loose cigarettes in several low-income and middle-income countries and their effects on tobacco control policies, particularly taxation.

Design: An analysis of survey data targeting people who smoke in two African, one Southeast Asian and two South Asian countries and retailers across 16 African countries to study loose cigarette markets and examine how prices in these markets move relative to the prices for cigarette packs.

Results: Markets for loose cigarettes are large, and their consumer base tends to differ from the wider population of people who smoke.

No smoking gun: tobacco taxation and smuggling in Sierra Leone.

Objective: To evaluate the common industry claim that higher tobacco taxation leads to higher levels of smuggling, particularly in a limited state capacity setting.

Design: This paper evaluates the effects of a tobacco tax increase in Sierra Leone on smuggling by using gap analyses. Its models are based on multiple rounds of the Demographic and Health Survey and customs data as well as newly collected data on cigarette prices.