While raising tobacco taxes to cut back on smoking addiction is an idea with considerable merit, it raises concerns about another addiction 鈥� that of governments to taxes.
An Ontario researcher says the single most effective way to reduce smoking and its millions of attendant deaths is to boost the price of cigarettes.
Prabhat Jha, director of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael鈥檚 Hospital in Toronto, is the author of a study that calls for tripling tobacco taxes and doubling the price of cigarettes. He says that鈥檚 the only way to reach the World Health Organization鈥檚 objective of reducing smoking by one-third by 2025, a goal supported by sa国际传媒 and most other countries. He said his research shows that making smoking more expensive will prevent some people from starting the habit, and will convince others to quit.
When sa国际传媒 began aggressively increasing tobacco taxes in the early 1980s, teen smoking declined accordingly. When national and provincial governments began slashing tobacco taxes in the 1990s to combat the smuggling of American cigarettes, teen smoking increased.
We favour measures that will reduce smoking 鈥� society pays dearly for the consequences of this odious habit 鈥� but we鈥檙e also concerned about what happens when governments increase taxes for a particular purpose. The money raised tends to be siphoned into general revenues and the original purpose is forgotten.
We wouldn鈥檛 want to trade one bad habit for another.
