PrepTest 135, Section 2, Question 6
Mayor: Local antitobacco activists are calling for expanded(57 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(10 more words not shown)
- AA city-imposed tax(22 more words not shown)
- BConsumers are more(23 more words not shown)
- CUsually, cigarette sales(17 more words not shown)
- DPeople who are(22 more words not shown)
- EAntismoking education programs(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if people just buy their cigarettes outside the city?
Imagine Denver raises its cigarette tax. A resident drives to a nearby suburb, buys cigarettes there, and brings them home. Denver's cigarette sales fall, but the resident keeps smoking just as much. The place of purchase has changed; the amount smoked hasn't.
That's the gap in the mayor's evidence. The proposed taxes would fund antismoking education, but the mayor's central claim is that the taxes themselves would reduce smoking. The surveys establish a drop in sales within cities that raise taxes. They don't establish that the cities' residents consume fewer cigarettes.
What we’re looking for
For a weakener, I'd look for evidence of that shopping-around possibility. We can accept the reported sales decline and still question what it shows about smoking. Whether the education programs work is a separate issue; the mayor is defending the effect of the taxes even while leaving the programs' effectiveness open.
Working the answers
- A
If the tax is burdensome, this says it will substantially reduce smoking. That supports the kind of effect the mayor predicts. We aren't told precisely how burdensome the proposed increase would be, but the conditional claim gives us no reason to doubt the mayor's reasoning.
- B
Consumers might respond less strongly to a tax increase than to another price increase and still reduce their purchases substantially. Comparing the two kinds of price increases doesn't establish that the tax fails to reduce smoking. Our question concerns the effect of this tax, not which kind of price increase works best.
- CCorrect
Sales rise substantially around cities after the cities impose stiff cigarette taxes. That gives substance to the possibility that smokers simply buy elsewhere. The lower city sales may partly reflect displaced purchases instead of less smoking. C doesn't prove that nobody cuts back; it undermines using the city's sales decline as strong evidence for the claimed reduction.
- D
This concerns being informed about tobacco's effects. It could be relevant to evaluating an educational approach, but the mayor's argument is about the taxes themselves. It doesn't expose a problem in the move from lower city sales to less smoking.
- E
A successful program might shrink its own tax-funded budget because fewer cigarettes are sold. That is a question about maintaining funding, not evidence that the tax fails to reduce smoking. The answer even describes what would happen if the programs succeed.
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