More taxes on cigarettes: the WHO recipe against smoking

The most effective and quickest way to avoid numerous diseases, earn income, discourage people from continuing and prevent young people from starting to smoke is very simple: increase taxes on cigarettes. Indeed, increase taxes on all products containing nicotine and tobacco since Italy, which has a tax rate of 77 percent, which is close to the 75 recommended by the World Health Organization, still has popular selling prices compared to the 30 dollars a pack in Australia or the more than 13 euros in France: in our country a pack of cigarettes costs just over 6 euros.

The role of industries

A very crowded session, the one on taxes, at the World Congress of Tobacco Control, underway in Dublin, not by chance there are two Finance Ministers present, that of Chile and Senegal, who explain how increasing taxes is good for the State, because it increases revenue and decreases health costs, and for citizens because it does not make them sick of the many diseases inextricably linked to tobacco. But increasing taxes is not as easy as it seems, because the tobacco industries put pressure on governments, interfere with decisions, fund studies that demonstrate that increasing taxes does not work, put pressure on newspapers.

The fact that Italy is in a very bad position from this point of view is demonstrated by the Tobacco Industry Interference Index which, as its name suggests, measures the degree of involvement of producers in the decision-making and legislative processes of a country. Well, among European countries, Italy is in the last places for interference after Switzerland and Romania. Taking 100 as the maximum degree of interference – which the Dominican Republic has – Italy is at 75. The most virtuous is Brunei with 14, in Europe France with 32.

Our Country

The permeability of political decisions to the desires of industry means many things, none of which are good for citizens and in this case not even for state budgets. Furthermore, in 2008, Italy signed the World Health Organization's Treaty on Tobacco Control (FCTC). "Which in Article 5.3 - emphasizes Silvano Gallus, Head of the Research Laboratory on Lifestyles at the Mario Negri Institute - provides that politicians must not have any connection with the industry except to explain the regulation. And instead such a high interference index means that the industry is almost an ally of politics and decides what to apply. Moreover, let's not forget that Philip Morris chose our country and Japan - not by chance the countries with the worst index and the highest consumption of heated tobacco products - to build a center for the global launch of Iqos, near Bologna".

The discount for Iqos

Returning to taxes, today in Italy there is a clear difference between traditional cigarettes, taxed at 75%, and e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, such as Iqos, which instead enjoy a very favorable tax regime. “I find it crazy that they do not fall under the Sirchia law because they are not considered tobacco and therefore are not subject to the same restrictive rules – continues Gallus – plus they also have a lower tax rate of 60% compared to traditional cigarettes. My institute, with the collaboration of Altroconsumo, calculated that in 2021, thanks to this tax gift, one billion euros did not enter the government coffers, but those of Philip Morris. And in 2021, the diffusion was even lower: today 4% of Italians smoke Iqos and 3% smoke e-cigs, so the income would be higher”.

And it is on the increase in taxes that Vital Strategies, a public global health organization, which also organized the Dublin congress, with 3,200 delegates from all over the world, is also insisting. Taxes on smoking but also on alcohol. “It is important that governments make the right choices for citizens,” says Mary Ann Etiebet , president and CEO of Vital Strategies, “and with the current global financing crisis, a good way to generate income is to increase taxes. If this fails, it is only because the industry influences political choices. Taxes are the most effective measure and it is no coincidence that it is the measure that the industry fights the most, which is why our organization also works to reduce these interferences.”

The economic model

To convince governments – and respond to pressure from the tobacco industry – Vital Strategies itself, with the American Cancer Society and Johns Hopkins University have developed a new interactive model – CoRRE , Cost Recovery and Revenue Estimator – that demonstrates how countries can use tobacco taxes to reduce smoking, increase productivity and recoup millions spent on care for smoking-related diseases. Try it and believe it.