Pay more, smoke less: Possible effects of raising tobacco taxes across the EU
In higher income countries, raising tobacco taxes could increase revenues that could be spend on prevention and control programs, while in lower income countries tax revenues may be negatively affected, researchers at Overseas Chinese University, Taiwan suggest. Dr Christian Schafferer, a co-author of the study said: "Our findings could assists policy makers in adopting effective measures to reduce nicotine consumption in Europe. We show that the implementation of MPOWER measures, which were proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2008 and include increases in tobacco tax and support for quitters, has positive effects on reducing tobacco consumption in all countries and we encourage health authorities to increase efforts to implement these measures. However, since individual countries are differently affected by these measures, they should adopt different policies to fight nicotine use. For example, in high-income countries, where taxation is less effective than in...