LSAT 135 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q6

LR Question 6 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Mayor: Local antitobacco activists are calling for …

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: Higher taxes on cigarettes would reduce smoking.

REASONING: Cities with large cigarette tax increases have much lower cigarette sales.

ANALYSIS: The mayor’s reasoning is:

• Cities that raise cigarette taxes see cigarette sales fall.
• So fewer people must be smoking.

Do you notice the key assumption? It’s that lower cigarette sales in the city means less smoking in the city.

But those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Imagine I live in City A. Cigarettes become much more expensive there, so I drive 15 minutes to City B and buy them instead.

What happens?

• Cigarette sales in City A go down
• But my smoking stays exactly the same

That’s exactly the kind of evidence that weakens the argument. The mayor mistakes a drop in where cigarettes are purchased for a drop in how much people smoke.

___________

1. This strengthens the argument. It gives a reason to believe higher taxes really do reduce smoking.
2. Comparing two kinds of price increases doesn’t tell us whether cigarette taxes actually reduce smoking.
3. CORRECT. This gives us an alternative explanation for the evidence. Maybe city cigarette sales fell because smokers simply bought their cigarettes somewhere else. If that’s true, the drop in city sales does not show a drop in smoking.
4. This supports the education programs. The mayor already questioned those programs, but this doesn’t weaken the claim that higher taxes reduce smoking.
5. Irrelevant. This is about the long-term funding of education programs and says nothing about whether taxes reduce smoking.