The role of antismoking legislation on cigarette and alcohol consumption habits in Italy

The short-term effects of public smoking bans on individual smoking and drinking habitswere investigated in this paper. In 2005, a smoking ban was introduced in Italy, andwe exploited this exogenous variation to measure the effect on both smoking participa-tion and intensity and the indirect effect on alcohol consumption. Using data from theEveryday Life Aspects survey, for the period 2001–2007, we show that the introductionof smoke-free legislation in Italy significantly affected smoking behavior. We also docu-ment significant indirect effects on alcohol consumption for the main alcoholic beveragecategories. A robustness analysis is also performed, to test the extent to which unobserva-ble variables may bias our estimated parameters. Our results are then used to perform acost-effectiveness analysis of the anti-smoking legislation in Italy.