Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2011, 8 1687 Hyland, et al., who found that Upstate New York respondents who typically purchased cigarettes from an Indian Reservation were about 55% less likely to report making a quit attempt and 40% less likely to have quit at follow up, compared to participants who reported usually purchasing their cigarettes from other sources [29]. Therefore, tobacco control policies which eliminate these sources and institute equal tax or price increases across all sections of the tobacco market may have a greater impact on consistent users of price and tax avoidance techniques, as this group may no longer be able to afford their usual smoking behaviors. Although price and tax increases are accepted policy interventions for reducing smoking [1-5], the resulting higher prices could also increase use of price minimizing behaviors, possibly attenuating the effect of the tax itself. For example, after a large tax increase in New York City, although smoking rates declined, the proportion of cigarettes reportedly purchased outside of the city limits increased by 89%. Most of these alternative purchases were from lower taxed jurisdictions such as from New York State (outside of the city, tax jurisdiction), in a different state, over the internet, from another person, or from an Indian Reservation [4]. However, smokers who already engage in multiple price minimizing behaviors should be more likely to quit in the presence of a significant price increase due to the limited number of price minimization strategies available. This topic area requires further research, and we plan to explore this in relation to large one-off price increases from the USA in 2009 and in Australia in 2010 using ITC data. The relationship between use of price minimizing behaviors and cessation outcomes could also be related to other individualized smoking characteristics such as levels of dependence or lack of motivation to quit. For example, smokers who continue to use tobacco products stripped of much of their ancillary (value-added) appeal or those who purchase tobacco products by the carton, may be more addicted overall. Therefore, it is possible that use of these products is a sign of higher dependence, rather than a cause of reduced cessation success. However, we attempted to adjust for dependency using a measure which combined smokers‘ reported cigarettes per day and time to first cigarette upon waking in all multivariate analyses. Future research may be needed to understand the relationship between these measures with use of price minimizing behaviors on cessation outcomes. According to our model of compensatory behaviors, use of price minimizing behaviors is one choice in the wake of a price or tax increase. However, it is possible that use of price minimizing behaviors is also driven by high tobacco prices. Given the known relationship between high prices and smoking cessation, high tobacco prices could confound the relationship between use of price minimizing behaviors and cessation. Although not presented in this manuscript, after adjusting for an exogenous price variable, the relationship between each price minimizing behaviors and cessation behaviors were still present, suggesting that price did not in fact confound these relationship. Data from this manuscript indicate that there are no significant differences in cessation outcomes by socio-economic status for select purchasing patterns. There may be several explanations for this lack of statistical interaction. Firstly, as the data suggest, SES may not impact the associations between purchasing patterns and cessation outcomes, and these relationships may be due to differences in dependence or other factors related to the individual. This scenario would benefit public health policy makers, in that new policy initiatives aimed at price and purchasing behaviors would have nearly the same affect on all members of the population, regardless of social class. However, analyses in this manuscript relied on a SES composite measure that was developed using self-reported income and