Impact of cigarette price and tobacco control policies on youth smoking experimentation in Albania.

BACKGROUND: Albania has one of the highest smoking prevalence in Europe especially among the youth. There is a lack of evidence in Albania, as well as in most of Eastern Europe and middle-income countries, regarding the effect of price on smoking experimentation. OBJECTIVE: The study aims to assess the effect of price and tobacco control policies on youth smoking experimentation in Albania. METHODS: We used microdata from the Global Youth Tobacco Survey in Albania for 2004, 2009, 2015 and 2020. We constructed a pseudo-longitudinal dataset and estimated a split-population model to assess the hazard of smoking experimentation. RESULTS: Price is a significant predictor of smoking experimentation among teenagers in Albania for both males and females (p<0.001). Being male increases the odds for smoking experimentation by more than 50% as compared with females (p<0.001), whereas females appear to be more price sensitive. Peer and parent smoking are also important determinants for smoking experimentation. Introducing penalties for smokers and legal entities violating smoke-free policies implemented in 2014 is also associated with a lower hazard of smoking experimentation. CONCLUSION: Price is a significant predictor of smoking experimentation among teenagers in Albania for both males and females. A combination of increasing taxes and strengthening the rule of law to control tobacco use in public spaces, in addition to public awareness campaigns targeting both youth and smoking parents, could help to significantly reduce the probability of smoking experimentation.

Italian national policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia and Umbria Regions.

Italy was the first European country to experience a huge outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and to implement various policies in order to contain the spread of the virus. This paper analyses the effects of policies implemented by the Italian government in response to the virus's spread in the first and the second wave of the pandemic. We analyze 307 municipalities of the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia and Umbria regions from 2 April 2020 to 7 February 2021. Our results show that the first relaxation policy implemented immediately after the lockdown had only a slight impact on the virus's spread. Moreover, we find that the mild restriction policy (orange zone) implemented during the second wave in Umbria was successful in containing the virus's spread in November 2020. However, this policy proved to be ineffective in countering new, more contagious variants of the virus.