WHO Calls on Countries to Raise Tobacco Taxes

Source from:  Business Day  05/28/2014

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has called on countries to raise taxes on tobacco to encourage users to stop and prevent other people from becoming addicted to tobacco, ahead of "World No Tobacco Day" on May 31.

WHO Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan, who made the call in a statement on Tuesday in Geneva, estimated 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.

"Today, every six seconds someone dies from tobacco use, tobacco kills up to half of its users," the statement reads. "It also incurs considerable costs for families, businesses, and governments, while treating tobacco-related diseases like cancer and heart disease is expensive.

"And as tobacco-related diseases and death often strike people in the prime of their working lives, productivity and incomes fall.

"Raising taxes on tobacco is the most effective way to reduce use and save lives, determined action on tobacco tax policy hits 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.

"They also encouraged existing young smokers to either reduce their use of tobacco or quit altogether.

"Price increases are two to three times more effective in reducing tobacco use among young people than among older adults," Dr Douglas Bettcher, Director of the Department for Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases at WHO also said.

"Tax policy can be divisive, but this is the tax rise everyone can support, as tobacco taxes go up, death and disease go down," Bettcher said.

According to Bettcher, WHO also calculates that if all countries increased tobacco taxes by 50 per cent per pack, governments will earn 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.

Countries such as France and the Philippines have already seen the benefits of imposing high taxes on tobacco.

Between the early 1990s and 2005, France tripled its inflation-adjusted cigarette prices.

This was followed by sales falling by over 50 per cent.

A few years later, the number of young men dying from lung cancer in France started to go down.

In the Philippines, one year after increasing taxes, the Government has collected over the expected revenue and planned to spend 85 per cent of such earnings on health services.

Tobacco use is the world's leading preventable cause of death.

Tobacco kills nearly 6 million people each year, of which over 600,000 are non-smokers dying from breathing 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 among people living in low and middle income countries, experts warned. Enditem