Tobacco Control Community Unites to Protect Youth: World No Tobacco Day 2024 On World No Tobacco Day 2024, we are joining the tobacco control community and sounding warning bells about the concerning trends in youth smoking around the world. Surveys from around the world show that youth tobacco prevalence is either increasing or staying the same in nearly half of countries where recent data are available (learn more in the Tobacco Atlas Youth chapter). These findings underscore the need to strengthen efforts to deter youth from initiating use ..read more

Pakistan’s Fiscal and Public Health Success with Higher Tobacco Taxes in 2022-23 Pakistan's Federal Excise Duty on cigarettes operates on a two-tiered specific system based on price— low and high. In the 2022-23 fiscal year, the government demonstrated its commitment to reducing cigarette consumption in Pakistan by significantly increasing excise tax rates on cigarettes in both tiers. This led to the excise tax share in retail price—a good marker of effectiveness—reaching 48% and 68% for the low and high tiers, respectively. The printed price of the most sold brand, Capston, rose from PKR 97.5 ..read more

New Tobacconomics Cigarette Tax Scorecard Reveals Lack of Progress on Tobacco Taxes The third edition of the Tobacconomics Cigarette Tax Scorecard is out today, with troubling results for the tobacco control community. Governments have made insufficient progress in addressing one of the world’s leading causes of preventable death: tobacco use ..read more

Looking Back on 2023: New Global Research on the Economics of Tobacco and Alcohol Over the course of 2023, Tobacconomics continued to work with partners around the world, unified by a shared goal: to reduce the harms associated with tobacco and alcohol use in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs ..read more

Tobacco Tax Increases Around the World– August 2023 Update After decades of mounting evidence showing the devastating effects of the tobacco epidemic and the efficacy of taxation as a tool to curb harm, the tobacco control community may sound like a broken record. Still, tobacco use continues to be the leading cause of preventable death around the world, imposing a significant economic burden on smoking households, countries’ healthcare systems and entire economies alike. Therefore, it remains essential that policymakers adopt evidence-based best practices in tobacco taxation, and update them ..read more

New Study on the Tobacconomics Cigarette Tax Scorecard in Relation to Tobacco Tax Revenues Increasing tobacco excise taxes is an extremely effective tobacco control measure that can also serve as an important revenue source for governments. A large body of literature documents the effectiveness of higher tobacco taxes to decrease tobacco consumption, including mitigating initiation and encouraging cessation. Notably, there is still limited empirical evidence on the relationship between tobacco taxes and tobacco tax revenues, which is often a principal focus of tax policy makers ..read more

Tobacco Taxes and the Threat of the Illicit Market: Southeastern Europe Over the past five years, Tobacconomics has been partnering with think tanks in low- and middle-income countries to improve our understanding of the economics of tobacco and tobacco control around the world. Our work aims to answer the questions set out by six research core competencies (shown below). The competencies are based on current political discussions surrounding tobacco control efforts ..read more

Tobacco Taxes and the Threat of the Illicit Market: Latin America Five years ago, we launched the Think Tanks Project to build a local evidence base on the economics of tobacco and tobacco control in low- and middle-income countries. The research topics we pursued with our think tank partners were guided by six research core competencies (presented below as questions). This framework ensured that our findings were relevant and timely for policy makers ..read more

2023 Brings Tobacco Tax Increases Around the World We covered a lot of ground on the blog in 2022 reviewing the evidence on tobacco taxation in various regions around the world. Across these vastly different policy environments, two things hold true: tobacco use continues to cause enormous harm, particularly among youth and low-income families, and taxation remains the most cost-effective, evidence-supported tobacco control tool to counter those harms. As we last discussed on the blog in July, many countries took steps towards improving tobacco control through increased taxation in 2022. While ..read more