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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香烟税和青少年吸食大麻。


卷烟税对青少年吸食大麻的溢出效应一直是公众激烈争论的话题。香烟税的反对者警告说，增税将导致年轻人转向大麻。另一方面，公共卫生专家经常声称，由于烟草是一种“入门”毒品，较高的卷烟税将阻止青少年吸食大麻。我们利用 1991 年至 2017 年期间国家和州青少年风险行为调查 (YRBS) 的数据，探讨了州卷烟消费税与青少年吸食大麻之间的关系。总的来说，我们的结果未能支持上述任一假设。相反，我们发现几乎没有证据表明青少年吸食大麻对州卷烟税的变化敏感。这一无效结果适用于样本期，在该样本期中，观察到卷烟税对青少年卷烟使用以及数据中的许多人口群体的影响最大。最后，我们发现初步证据表明，最近采用的州电子烟税与青少年大麻使用的减少有关。