Last week the Baltimore Sun published my letter to the editor arguing that the rationale behind another cigarette tax increase was weak. Right on cue, lobbyist extraordinaire Vinny DeMarco pens his own letter to the Sun saying I’m wrong. I figured he’d write a rebuttal, and am glad that he now finally spells my name right when painting me as a stooge for Big Tobacco. It took him a few years to get the spelling of my name correct, so maybe it will take him another couple years to get the actual facts about youth tobacco usage correct, too. In order to help him out for the upcoming legislative session, I’ll explain why the numbers he cites in his letter are factually incorrect.

In my letter, I pointed out that between 2006 and 2008, underage cigarette usage in Maryland went up. Those are important dates because the state enacted a cigarette tax increase in 2007. As DeMarco notes, the cigarette tax increase didn’t take effect until January 1, 2008, and between 2008 and 2010 “smoking among teens in Maryland dropped from 15.3 percent to 14.1 percent…”

Except that the data don’t really support him.

First off, “smoking among teens” did not drop “from 15.3 percent to 14.1 percent.” As the numbers from the Biennial Tobacco Study published by the state’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene show (page 36), underage cigarette use between 2008 and 2010 fell from 10.2% to 9.6%. That’s a decline, certainly, not as big a decline as DeMarco claims. In fact, the report notes that this decline is not statistically significant.

So where does DeMarco get his numbers? He is using the numbers for underage high school cigarette usage, which did decline by the percentages quoted by DeMarco. He misrepresents the data since he only includes one set of underage cigarette users (high schoolers) while leaving out data from another set of underage cigarette users (middle schoolers). Interestingly, the cigarette usage rate of this younger set of smokers, a group which you would think would be much more sensitive to higher cigarette prices, was unchanged between 2008 and 2010.

Secondly, DeMarco implies that since the cigarette tax took place effect on January 1, 2008, and underage smoking declined between 2008 and 2010, it means the tax hike was responsible for this decline. But this implication is somewhat undercut by the way smoking data is collected. The Youth Tobacco Survey does not measure cigarette usage on January 1 of any given year. As the RFP for the Maryland Youth Tobacco Survey stipulates, the survey is given to students in the last quarter of the year. This means the results for 2008 were from respondents who filled out the survey sometime between September 1, 2008, and December 31, 2008.

In other words, the Maryland Youth Tobacco Survey asked underage Marylanders between September 1, 2006, and December 31, 2006, whether they used cigarettes. Ten percent said they did. Then, the survey asked underage Marylanders between September 1, 2008, and December 31, 2008, whether they used cigarettes. Ten and two-tenths of a percent said they did. I fully acknowledge this is a minor increase and not statistically significant, but it is nonetheless an increase in underage smoking. And when these youth were asked, it was at least nine months, and possibly up to twelve months, after the cigarette tax hike had taken effect.

In other words, the 2008 survey results reflect the initial impact of the cigarette tax increase, so they are not the set of numbers which you can use as your base to measure whether the tax increase reduced cigarette use. The fact is, nine months after the cigarette tax hike went into effect a higher percentage of underage Marylanders used cigarettes than in 2006.

Let’s also look at some other numbers for the 2008 and 2010 time frame, since that’s what Demarco likes to discuss. The percentage of underage Marylanders who initiated tobacco usage increased from 14.8% to 18.1%. If the tobacco tax hike made cigarettes so much more expensive, why did a higher percentage of underage Marylanders start using tobacco in that time? But, to be fair, during that time frame there was also a large increase in the percentage of underage Marylanders who stopped using cigarettes (from 38% in 2008 to 45% in 2010).

Let’s be clear – the data do not show that the cigarette tax increase led to an increased usage of cigarettes by underage Marylanders. The data don’t even show that the cigarette tax hike had no effect on underage cigarette use. But they don’t support DeMarco’s open-and-shut case that the 2007 cigarette tax increase led to a decline in youth smoking. The data are ambiguous on this point. DeMarco tries to massage the data and misrepresent them, but when you drill down you see they don’t say what he wants them to say.

DeMarco has remarkable success in pushing for tax hikes on unpopular products like alcohol and tobacco. He’s a great lobbyist and while I don’t agree with him, I do admire his commitment and his skill. But when he makes claims about what the data say, he should be accurate. In this case, he was not accurate, and legislators, the media, and the public should be rigorous in double-checking his numbers and his narratives about what those numbers mean.