Introduction: Electronic cigarettes are the most popular tobacco product among U.S. youth, and over 80% of current youth users of e-cigarettes use flavored e-cigarettes, with fruit, mint/menthol, and candy/sweets being the most popular flavors. A number of new e-liquid flavors are currently emerging in the online e-cigarette market. Menthol and other flavored e-cigarettes could incentivize combustible tobacco smokers to transition to e-cigarette use. Methods: From February to May 2021, we scraped data of over 14,000 e-liquid products, including detailed descriptions of their flavors, from five national online vape shops. Building upon the existing e-liquid flavor wheel, we expanded the semantic databases (i.e., key terms) to identify flavors using WordNet—a major database for keyword matching and group discussion. Using the enriched databases, we classified 14,000+ e-liquid products into the following 11 main flavor categories: “fruit”, “dessert/candy/sweets”, “coffee/tea”, “alcohol”, “other beverages”, “tobacco”, “mint/menthol”, “nuts”, “spices/pepper”, “other flavors”, and “unspecified flavor”. Results: We find that the most prominent flavor sold in the five online vape shop in 2021 was fruit flavored products, followed by dessert/candy/other sweets. Online vendors often label a product with several flavor profiles, such as fruit and menthol. Conclusions: Given that online stores market products with multiple flavor profiles and most of their products contain fruit flavor, the FDA may have issued marketing denial orders to some of these products. It is important to further examine how online stores respond to the FDA flavor restrictions (e.g., compliance or non-compliance).

Background: States adopt different tax bases for smokeless tobacco (SLT), making tax incidence on SLT not directly comparable across states. In addition, how taxes are passed through to SLT prices among states that impose specific taxes, and whether the pass-through rates for SLT are affected by the uptake and evolution of e-cigarettes, is unknown. Objective: This study will calculate the tax incidence on SLT and investigate how SLT taxes are passed to prices at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile levels, as well as whether these pass-through rates vary by e-cigarette uptake and evolution. Methods: We regressed SLT prices on specific taxes using ordinary least square regressions while controlling for state-, year-, and quarter-fixed effects. We then tested the difference in tax pass-through rates by different periods. Findings: The average tax incidence on chewing tobacco, moist snuff, dry snuff, and snus was 22%, 22%, 23%, and 20%, respectively. For moist snuff, taxes were fully passed to prices at the 25th and 50th percentiles (rate = 1.01, p < 0.001) and overly passed to prices at the 75th percentile (rate = 1.25, p < 0.001). The e-cigarette uptake and evolution significantly raised taxes by 13 cents and 14 cents per ounce, respectively, for moist snuff at the 75th percentile prices (p < 0.05). Conclusions: If harm is considered a criterion for taxing tobacco products, the tax incidence on SLT could be further increased. Considering that lower-priced SLT have lower tax pass-through rates, price promotion restrictions and minimum pricing laws may be needed to increase the cost of lower-priced products. Additionally, we observed that tobacco companies tended to increase tax pass-through for premium SLT products as e-cigarettes gained popularity, which may indicate a strategic response to shifting consumer preferences.

Background: States adopt different tax bases on smokeless tobacco (SLT), making tax incidence on SLT not directly comparable across states. In addition, how taxes are passed through to SLT prices among states that impose specific taxes, and whether the pass-through rates for SLT are affected by the uptake and evolution of e-cigarettes is unknown. Objective: This study will calculate the tax incidence on SLT and investigate how SLT taxes are passed to prices at the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile levels, as well as whether these pass-through rates vary by e-cigarette uptake and evolution. Methods: We regressed SLT prices on specific taxes using Ordinary Least Square regressions while controlling for state-, year-, and quarter-fixed effects. We then tested the difference in tax pass-through rates by different periods. Findings: The average tax incidence on chewing tobacco, moist snuff, dry snuff, and snus is 22%, 22%, 23%, and 20%, respectively. For moist snuff, taxes were fully passed to prices at the 25th and 50th percentiles and overly passed to prices at the 75th percentile. The e-cigarette uptake and evolution significantly raised taxes by 13 cents and 14 cents per ounce, respectively, for moist snuff at the 75th percentile prices. Conclusions: There is room to additionally raise SLT taxes. Given lower tax pass-through rates for lower-priced SLT, price promotion restrictions and minimum pricing laws may be needed to increase the cost of low-priced products. Tobacco companies increase tax pass-through to premium SLT as e-cigarettes grow popular, like the pricing strategy adopted for cigarettes.