This study explores and evaluates the relationships between economic and legislative tobacco policy predictors after adding other racial/ethnic SES predictors possibly influencing smoking cessation behavior among African Americans, Hispanics and the general U.S. population. Using panel time series data and inferential statistics, the research describes significant model and variable relationships and evaluate models for significance to increasing smoking cessation and reducing pack sales per capita. The study is based on the problem that although, government interventions to deter smoking are viewed as favorable, not all economic and legislative policies have significant influence on cessation equally across differing racial/ethnic groups and low-SES populations. These circumstances lead to unjust taxation of smokers, particularly minorities and low SES populations.

The stimuli for change among targeted populations were the identified economic (taxes) and selected legislative (ban) policy predictors along with introduced SES related variables of per capita income, education attainment, unemployment, poverty and race/ethnicity predictors.

The findings from this study agree with other researchers, that in general the current economic and legislative policies do impact cessation and pack sales but this research also finds that not all policy predictors selected are significant, particularly when statewide SES and race/ethnic predictors are introduced into the model. Findings reveal that per capita income, poverty rates, women of selected groups with high school diplomas but no college, and unemployment rate are consistently as significant as tax policies and ban legislation. It was found that state tax, workplace bans, and public housing bans were significant in combination with the introduced predictors for both African Americans and Hispanics. Finally less than half of the states have significant relationships with the all-inclusive predictor model.