We provide the first quasi-experimental evidence on the relationship between cigarette taxes and smoking among sexual minority adults, a group that has been understudied in past research. We use large samples of individuals in same-sex households (a large share of whom are sexual minorities in same-sex romantic relationships) from the 1996–2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. We find that cigarette taxes significantly reduced smoking among men and women in same-sex households, and the effects we find for men in same-sex households are very robust and significantly larger than the associated effects for men in different-sex households (the vast majority of whom are heterosexual married or partnered men). For men in same-sex households, we find no unintended consequences of higher cigarette taxes on other risky behaviors, and in fact we find that cigarette taxes are associated with significant improvements in self-rated health for men in same-sex households. These results suggest that the sizable disparities in adult smoking rates between heterosexual and sexual minority men would have been even larger in the absence of stricter tobacco control policy. However, in line with previous research indicating that cigarette taxes have ‘lost their bite’, we find no significant relationship between cigarette taxes and sexual minority smoking in more recent years.

我们提供了第一个关于吸烟税与性少数成年人吸烟之间关系的准实验证据，该群体在过去的研究中未被充分研究。我们使用来自 1996-2018 行为风险因素监测系统的大量同性家庭个体样本（其中很大一部分是同性恋爱关系中的性少数群体）。我们发现卷烟税显着减少了同性家庭中男性和女性的吸烟率，而且我们发现对同性家庭中男性的影响非常强大，并且明显大于对异性家庭中男性的相关影响（巨大的其中大多数是异性恋已婚或有伴侣的男性）。对于同性家庭中的男性，我们没有发现提高卷烟税对其他危险行为的意外后果，改善同性家庭中男性的自评健康状况。这些结果表明，如果没有更严格的烟草控制政策，异性恋和性少数男性之间的成人吸烟率差异会更大。然而，与之前的研究表明卷烟税“失去了吸引力”一致，我们发现近年来卷烟税与性少数群体吸烟之间没有显着关系。