Nicole Augustin (University of Edinburgh), and Rosemary Hiscock

Title: Introduction of standardised tobacco packaging and minimum excise tax in the UK: a prospective study

Abstract: Standardised packaging for factory made and roll your own tobacco was implemented inthe UK in May, 2017, alongside a minimum excise tax for factory made products. As other jurisdictions attempt to implement standardised packaging, the tobacco industrycontinues to suggest that it would be counterproductive, in part by leading to falls inprice due to commoditisation. Here, we assess the impact of the introduction of these policies on the UK tobacco market. We carried out a prospective study of UK commercial electronic point-of-sale data from 11 constituent geographic areas. Data were available for each tobacco product (or Stock Keeping Unit (SKU)): the tobacco brand, brand family, brand variant, specific features ofthe pack. For each SKU, three years (May 2015 to April 2018) of monthly data onvolume of sales, sales prices, and extent of distribution of sales within the 11 UK geographical areas were available. The main outcomes were changes in sales volumes, volume-weighted real prices, andtobacco industry revenue. To estimate temporal trends of monthly price per stick, revenue and volume sold we used additive mixed models. In the talk we will cover some of the statistically interesting details on data preparation, model choice, trend estimationand presentation of model results. We will also present the main results and talk about limitations.

This is joint work with Rosemary Hiscock, Rob Branston and Anna Gilmore. The project was funded by Cancer Research UK.