Colin A. Young
State House News Service

Since Massachusetts banned the sale of flavored tobacco products more than five years ago, the state's smoking rate has declined and residents have avoided more than $70 million in health care expenses, the state said Monday.

A 2019 law that took effect in mid-2020 made Massachusetts the first state in the country to prohibit the retail sale of flavored vaping products and flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes. Those products can now only be purchased for onsite consumption at licensed smoking bars.

The Department of Public Health released a series of reports, including one conducted by its Tobacco Cessation and Prevention Program in collaboration with economists from the University of Illinois at Chicago. That review of the state's restrictions on flavored and menthol tobacco, which is dated March 2024, found that the limits reduced the smoking prevalence in Massachusetts by 1.37 percentage points between June 2020 and January 2023. 

As a result, the economists projected reductions in chronic diseases and associated health care costs for lung cancer, heart attack, and stroke; as well as reductions in smoking-related birth and pregnancy complications and the necessary health care costs for the children of these pregnancies during their first year of life. The report projected total five-year cost savings to be just over $70 million and said the 10-year savings total is estimated to reach $200 million.

"Commemorating five years since the enactment of this historic legislation with the knowledge that this law is saving lives and money is one more way to highlight the transformative impact thoughtful policy can have on improving lives and reducing long-term health costs," Public Health Commissioner Dr. Robbie Goldstein said.

The New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association resisted the menthol ban and has argued the state ban would drive consumers to buy cigarettes in other states, costing Massachusetts tax revenue.

DPH said another study it released Monday looked at data from 2014 to 2023 and determined there is "no evidence that flavored tobacco sales restrictions have a negative effect on" either the number of retail stores that sell tobacco, the number of employees those retailers have or the wages they earn. But DPH acknowledged also that there was no data available "to assess the impact of flavored tobacco restrictions on additional business performance indicators such as sales revenue, net income, profit margins, or customer retention rates."

The most recent report of the Massachusetts Illicit Tobacco Task Force, released late last month, shows that the state took in $327.4 million in tobacco excise taxes in fiscal year 2025, including $289.4 million from cigarette taxes. That's down from $556.7 million in tobacco excises collected in fiscal 2019, with $515.4 million coming from cigarettes that year.

"The Task Force cannot identify any single reason why the combined tobacco and [vape] excise tax revenues have declined approximately 41% between FY19 and FY25. The decline in tobacco excise revenue could be due in part to the excise tax revenue system itself as consumers change their spending habits based upon the costs of the tobacco products, especially given other economic pressures (e.g., inflation) over the past several years. The decline could also be due in part to effective public health messaging which informs people about the harms associated with tobacco use. Or the decline could be due in part to the smuggling of untaxed tobacco products into Massachusetts," the report said. "The Commonwealth’s higher tax rates on tobacco and [vape products] relative to other states do provide smugglers a financial incentive to import such products from low-tax states and sell them to in-state buyers thereby evading the applicable tobacco excise. However, whatever the reason(s) for the decline in revenue, the most consistent data point is that overall tobacco use has declined in Massachusetts as well as nationally for the past several years – which would naturally result in decreased revenues."

The Illicit Tobacco Task Force report said the percentage of Massachusetts adults who smoke cigarettes has declined each year for the last decade – from 14.7% in 2014 to 8.8% as of 2024. It said state public health data show that the percentage of Massachusetts adults who use vape products has decreased from 6.2% in 2023 to 5.6% in 2024.