Mohamad Haniki Nik Mohamed It has been five years since Malaysia last had a tobacco tax increase. The 2021 budget, announced in November 2020, was an opportunity to correct this shortcoming and use one of the most cost-effective measures available to governments to reduce smoking. Instead, tobacco taxes remained static for the sixth year. The […]
Category: Taxation
WHO Knowledge Hub on tobacco taxation and illicit trade launches e-library
Samantha Filby The WHO FCTC Secretariat’s Knowledge Hub on Tobacco Taxation and Illicit Trade, hosted by the Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products (REEP) at the University of Cape Town, recently launched an e-library on tobacco taxation and illicit trade in tobacco products. It can be accessed at https://untobaccocontrol.org/taxation/e-library/ The purpose of the […]
Spain: Civil Rights and Public Health Organizations Press Government for a Tobacco Endgame by 2030
Laurent Huber, Ubaldo Cuadrado García de Arboleya, Raquel Fernández Megina and Leonardo Visconti More than twenty civil rights associations and public health organizations in Spain have backed a Declaration asking the Spanish Government for a Tobacco Endgame by 2030. The goal is ambitious: to decrease smoking prevalence in Spain to under 5% by 2030. The […]
Illicit Tobacco Trade not exacerbated by tobacco tax increases in low & middle income countries, research shows
Priscilla Tiigah and Erika Dayle Siu The health and economic consequences of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are well documented. The question of how best to control and prevent NCDs is urgent in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs), where the burden is disproportionately rising compared to high income countries. Tobacco, the only common risk factor for the four […]
Denmark: a new era for tobacco control
Finn Edler von Eyben Public health in Denmark received an early Christmas present on 18 December 2019, when most political parties agreed on a new tobacco control plan for the country. The plan contains a raft of new measures, including plain packaging of tobacco products, a ban on point of sale advertising, strengthened smoke-free public […]
How should governments deal with multinational consulting firms that work for the tobacco industry?
George Thomson, Louise Delany Department of Public Health, University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand george.thomson@otago.ac.nz The New Zealand Ministry of Health is currently using a consulting firm EY (formerly Ernst & Young) to research the impacts of tobacco taxation, despite EY’s work locally and internationally for tobacco companies. This decision may breach the Framework […]
South Africa: the complex politics impeding tobacco control progress
Yussuf Saloojee National Council Against Smoking South Africa has long been a front runner in tobacco control in Africa. It was an early adopter of comprehensive legislation, which resulted in a 40% drop in cigarette smoking prevalence, and, in turn, between 1997 and 2010, in declines in mortality from lung and oesophageal cancer, stroke, […]
Fake news: is smoking really increasing in Australia?
Author: Simon Chapman AO This blog post originally appeared on Doctor Portal and is published here with permission. ON 14 August, 2017, The Australian newspaper ran a story guaranteed to go viral. The headline screamed: “More smokers lighting up, despite the costs”. The journalist, Adam Creighton, who has, grotesquely, written about tobacco control being like […]
A missed opportunity: The US Helsinki Commission hearing on the illicit tobacco trade in the OSCE region
Benoît Gomis, Kelley Lee, Ross MacKenzie benoitg@sfu.ca On 19 July 2017, the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) – also known as the ‘Helsinki Commission’ – held a hearing on the illicit tobacco trade in the Organization for Security Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) region. The Helsinki Commission, an independent US government […]
France: breaking new ground in tobacco control
The start of 2017 has seen tobacco control in France boosted with a series of ground-breaking tobacco control measures, as detailed in a recent article by Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. After a phase-in period, cigarette plain packaging is fully in force as of 1 January 2017. As in other countries that have already introduced plain […]