Aggressive taxation is the key to achieving a World Health Organization goal of reducing the global prevalence of smoking by one-third, new research led by a Toronto scientist shows.
A study headed by St. Michael’s Hospital’s Centre for Global Health Research, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that tripling tobacco taxes around the world could reduce the number of smokers by 433.3 million people and prevent 200 million premature deaths from lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases.
“We hope this will spur governments to (recognize) it’s a no-brainer. There is more revenue, fewer deaths and all sorts of benefits for the population,” said Dr. Prabhat Jha, director of the centre and professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
He launched the study to determine how the worldwide prevalence of smoking could be chopped by a third by 2025, a goal set at the World Health Organization’s 2013 Assembly.
While the proposal to hike tobacco taxes is a global one, it is particularly targeted at 10 regions representing two-thirds of the world’s 1.3 billion smokers. In descending order, they are: China, India, the European Union, Indonesia, the United States, Russia, Japan, Brazil, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Strong lobbying by the tobacco industry has helped keep taxes lower in those countries, Jha explained.
Residents of China consume a staggering two trillion cigarettes annually, out of a world total of about six trillion.
Jha pointed out that the study is not just theoretical and that some counties have experienced great success in reducing smoking rates by sharply upping taxes.
For example, France tripled cigarette prices by raising taxes at least 5 per cent higher than the inflation rate every year between 1990 and 2005. At the same time, the country managed to halve cigarette consumption and double tobacco revenues.
The number of smokers in Canada has also dropped by half, but the decline has taken three decades and is largely due to tax increases, Jha said.
About 4 million Canadians smoke today, and that number could continue to be reduced — again by a third — if tobacco taxes were tripled, he said.
Jha noted that non-price interventions — including advertising bans, warning labels and smoke-free laws — also help to reduce smoking, but hiking taxes is the “single most effective” tool.
About $300 billion (U.S.) is collected annually in tobacco taxes around the world. Even though higher taxes would lower consumption, tax revenues would continue to rise by another $100 billion, bringing the annual total to $400 billion, the analysis showed.
“This study demonstrates that tobacco taxes are a hugely powerful lever and potentially a triple win, reducing the number of people who smoke and who die from their addiction, reducing premature deaths from smoking and at the same time increasing government revenue, said Sir Richard Peto, an epidemiology professor at the University of Oxford who co-authored the study.
An oft-heard argument against hiking tobacco taxes is that it would result in more smuggling. For this reason, Jha said, it is important to have strategies to crack down on smuggling as taxes increase.