The impact of tobacco control expenditures on smoking initiation and cessation

Between 1997 and 2007, smoking prevalence declined from 33% to 28% in Switzerland. Over the same period, funding for tobacco control activities significantly increased, resulting in the implementation of a large variety of national and regional interventions. In this paper, I exploit variation over time and across cantons of tobacco control expenditures to examine the impact of these policies on smoking decisions. I use retrospective smoking information from the Swiss Health Survey (2007) and find that tobacco control expenditures decreased the probability of smoking initiation among adolescents and young adults and increased cessation rates in the general population of smokers. I estimate that if funding had been kept at the 1997 level, there would have been 107,000 additional smokers in 2007.