The spillover effect of cigarette taxes on youth marijuana use has been the subject of intense public debate. Opponents of cigarette taxes warn that tax hikes will cause youths to substitute toward marijuana. On the other hand, public health experts often claim that because tobacco is a "gateway" drug, higher cigarette taxes will deter youth marijuana use. Using data from the National and State Youth Risk Behavior Surveys (YRBS) for the period 1991-2017, we explore the relationship between state excise taxes on cigarettes and teen marijuana use. In general, our results fail to support either of the above hypotheses. Rather, we find little evidence to suggest that teen marijuana use is sensitive to changes in the state cigarette tax. This null result holds for the sample period where cigarette taxes are observed to have the largest effect on teen cigarette use and across a number of demographic groups in the data. Finally, we find preliminary evidence that the recent adoption of state e-cigarette taxes is associated with a reduction in youth marijuana use.

中文翻译：

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香烟税和青少年使用大麻。

香烟税对青少年大麻使用的溢出效应一直是激烈辩论的主题。反对卷烟税的人警告说，加税将导致年轻人代替大麻。另一方面，公共卫生专家经常声称，由于烟草是一种“门户”药物，因此较高的卷烟税将阻止青少年使用大麻。使用1991年至2017年期间国家和州青少年风险行为调查（YRBS）的数据，我们研究了卷烟的州消费税与青少年大麻使用之间的关系。通常，我们的结果不能支持以上任一假设。相反，我们几乎没有证据表明使用青少年大麻对州卷烟税的变化敏感。此无效结果适用于样本期内，其中观察到卷烟税对青少年卷烟使用影响最大，并且在数据中的许多人口统计群体中也是如此。最后，我们发现初步证据表明，最近通过的州电子烟税与减少青少年大麻使用有关。