Tripling Tobacco Tax Would Make Smoking an Expensive Habit and Save Lives, Study Shows

A new study suggests that tripling the tax on tobacco worldwide could prevent 200 million tobacco-related deaths by 2025.

Published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the review says the tax increase would double the retail price of tobacco in some countries, Medical News Today reported. The strategy would encourage people to quit smoking and deter young people from adopting the habit, according to researchers.

One of the study's authors is Dr. Prabhat Jha, director of the Center for Global Health Research of St. Michael's Hospital and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

Jha believes raising tobacco taxes to treble the current rate would have the biggest effect "in low- and middle-income countries, where smoking rates are on the rise and the price of tobacco is relatively low," according to Medical News Today.

Around 200,000 people under 70 die in the United States and Canada each year from using tobacco, Jha said.

The researcher says the tax could both reduce tobacco consumption and fund government health care. If the U.S. and Canada even double the tobacco tax, Jha estimates that 70,000 deaths would be prevented and the tax increase would generate an additional $100 billion each year.

Sir Richard Peto of the University of Oxford in the UK co-authored the review and calls the higher tax a possible "triple win" for the countries worldwide that have vowed to reduce tobacco-related deaths.

At the 2013 United Nations General Assembly and the World Health Organization (WHO) Assembly, countries around the globe agreed to work to reduce smoking prevalence by a third by 2025.

Peto said, "This study demonstrates that tobacco taxes are a hugely powerful lever and potentially a triple win--reducing the numbers of people who smoke and who die from their addiction, reducing premature deaths from smoking and yet, at the same time, increasing government income."