Higher Tobacco Taxes Will Save More Lives – WHO

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has called on countries to raise taxes on tobacco to encourage users to stop smoking.
WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan, who made the call in Geneva, also said this would prevent other people from becoming addicted to the substance.
The world health body estimates that by increasing tobacco taxes to about 50 per cent, all countries would reduce the number of smokers by 49 million within the next three years, and ultimately save 11 million lives based on 2012 data.

As of today, 1 person dies every six seconds from tobacco use, and tobacco kills up to half of its users because the addiction leads to increased intake. It also incurs considerable costs for families, businesses, and governments, with the treatment of tobacco-related diseases like cancer and heart disease very expensive.
In addition, since tobacco-related diseases and death often strike people in the prime of their working lives, productivity and incomes also fall.
Chan emphasised, “Raising taxes on tobacco is the most effective way to reduce use and save lives, and determined action on tobacco tax policy will hit the industry where it hurts.”
According to WHO, high prices are particularly effective in discouraging young people (who often have more limited incomes than older adults) from taking up smoking. It also encourages existing young smokers to either reduce their use of tobacco or quit altogether.
Dr Douglas Bettcher, Director of the Department for Prevention of Non-communicable Diseases at WHO, also stressed that “Price increases are two to three times more effective in reducing tobacco use among young people than among older adults.”
Bettcher, who admitted that tax policies can be divisive, added, “this is a tax rise everyone can support; as tobacco taxes go up, death and disease go down.”
Another calculation by the world health body is that increase in tobacco taxes by 50 per cent per pack will earn governments an extra 101 billion dollars in global revenue. “These additional funds could and should be used to advance health and other social programmes,” Bettcher said.
The testimony of France when it tripled cigarette prices, between the 1990s to 2005, is that sales plunged by 50 per cent and, a few years later, youth deaths from lung cancer started dropping.
In the Philippines, one year after increasing tobacco taxes, the government has surpassed expected revenue, and plans to spend 85 per cent of it on health services.
Tobacco use is the world’s leading preventable cause of death, killing nearly 6 million people each year, over 600,000 of which are non-smokers dying from second-hand smoke.
If no action is taken, tobacco will kill over 8 million people every year by 2030, over 80 per cent of them people living in low and middle income countries.