Call to raise cigarette taxes

Friday, 13 May 2005 12:00 AM

A leading medical journal is today calling for aggressive rises in tobacco taxation to prevent a global lung cancer epidemic.

Lancet editor Richard Horton calls on all governments to reduce demand for cigarettes by imposing an annual 50 per cent price increase.

Lung cancer is the most common cancer across the world. This year, 1.4 million individuals will be diagnosed with the disease and only one in six will live to see 2010.

Dr Horton's editorial states that because tobacco will kill half of those who habitually smoke, "the least we should do is match this 50 per cent mortality with a 50 per cent tax".

Such a radical step is the only way of avoiding an "endemic tragedy", he says.

"If the cause of lung cancer were an infectious agent, millions - if not billions - of pounds would have been poured into an eradication campaign. There is no such natural contagion, however, for lung cancer", Dr Horton writes.

"Instead, the single, human-made causative factor is flourishing."

Lung cancer rates largely reflect the legacy of the smoking habits of 20 years earlier. Cigarette consumption is now waning in many rich countries, but people living in low and middle-income nations will be worst affected in years to come, the editorial states.

But the public information campaigns and regulation that have helped people kick or avoid the habit in the UK, North America, and northern Europe are not as effective in the developing world. Here poor literacy, poverty and inadequate health systems muffle the anti-smoking message, the Lancet says.

Dr Horton cites World Bank research that estimates a price increase of ten per cent can reduce demand for tobacco products by four per cent in high-income countries and by eight per cent in low and middle-income countries.

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