Governments should be using their tax systems to encourage smokers to switch to using safer nicotine products instead of cigarettes, says a new briefing paper from the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction (GSTHR) project.
Taxation has long been seen by tobacco control groups as one of the most effective tools for controlling the use of cigarettes, says Safer nicotine product taxation and optimal strategies for public health. However, calls from organisations like the WHO to tax safer nicotine products at comparable rates to cigarettes could have ‘devastating consequences’ for public health, the document warns. Instead, governments should be using tax to make sure that cigarettes are ‘significantly’ more expensive than vapes or heated tobacco products, it states.
Tax is designed to serve two main purposes when it comes to tobacco, says the report – to reduce demand by increasing prices, and to generate revenue for the government. However, while higher taxes have helped to cut smoking prevalence rates in many countries, tax measures like those recommended by WHO could mean people returning to smoking cigarettes instead of using less harmful alternatives. At least 54 countries had imposed excise taxes on vapes as far back as 2023, the briefing says, while almost 70 countries had brought in excise taxes on heated tobacco products.
All countries – even those where cigarette taxes represent significant sources of revenue – should be prioritising harm reduction, the paper stresses, as the long-term public health and economic gains far outweigh any short-term losses in revenue. Governments should also consider subsiding safer nicotine products, it adds. This would mirror the subsidisation of nicotine replacement therapies (NRT), which has ‘proven cost-effective,’ it states. ‘Given evidence that vaping products are even more effective than NRT in helping people to quit smoking, subsidising safer nicotine products could yield substantial public health and economic benefits, making it a logical and impactful policy choice.’
Analysis by ASH last year found that nearly 3m people had successfully used vapes to stop smoking during the previous five years, making them by far the most popular aid among people who had successfully quit. However, the proportion of people who mistakenly believe that vaping is as harmful as – or more harmful than – smoking continues to increase, with a study by Brighton and Sussex Medical School earlier this year finding that this was actively discouraging young people from switching to vaping.
‘Tax has played an important role in many countries in helping reduce smoking rates,’ said the GSTHR report’s author, Giorgi Mzhavanadze. ‘By using informed and evidence-based approaches to differentiate between combustible, hazardous tobacco products and much safer nicotine products there is a potential to hasten the demise of smoking and improve public health, benefiting individuals and communities.’
Report available here