Measuring illicit cigarette consumption with tobacco surveillance data: evidence from the Global Adult Tobacco Survey for Mexico

摘要

Background Illicit trade in cigarettes poses a threaten totobacco control. Reliable measures of the extent of this problem are scarce,however. The objective of this study is to use tobacco surveillance data to measureillicit cigarette consumption in Mexico.Methods Data comes from the GATS Mexico 2009 and 2015. Inparticular, self-reported information of brands is employed to identify illicitcigarettes. Since the GATS 2015 collected images from packs in smokers'personal possession, we also use this information to validate self-reported data.Results Self-reported informationindicates that illicit cigarette consumption increased from 0.5% to 2.7%between 2009 and 2015. For the subsample of smokers with both self-reported andcigarette pack information, the share of illicit cigarette consumption is lowerif calculated with the former, but the difference is not statisticallysignificant. Additionally, if we use cigarette pack information to adjust thetotal estimate for 2015, this increases by just 1.1 percentage point. Only 25%of the smokers had a pack at interview, however. This is related to marked differences inconsumption patterns: being a daily smoker and having bought a pack at lastpurchase, as opposed to being occasional smokers and having bought a singlecigarette, increases the odds of having a pack at interview. These characteristics are alsoassociated with the likelihood of consuming illicit cigarettes.Conclusions Despite important increasesin tobacco taxes during 2009-2015 in Mexico, surveillance data indicate that illicitcigarette consumption increased by only 2 percentage points and is currently below5%. This figure is much lower than the estimates of the tobacco industry, whichis consistent with the findings of previous academic studies for othercountries. Self-reported information was rather accurate for more heavysmokers, but future research should assess whether that is also the case for occasionalsmokers, who are more likely to buy single cigarettes.