OTTAWA: Ottawa needs to hike tobacco taxes significantly to meet its long-term target of reducing smoking to just five per cent of the Canadian population, says a report for Health Canada.
The internal report, obtained by CBC News under the Access to Information Act, says cigarette taxes have been the most effective tool for cutting smoking, based on the Canadian experience since 1999.
“Cigarette taxes had the largest effect, followed by health warnings, smoke-free air laws, retail point of sale bans and cessation treatment policies,” concludes David Levy, of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., drawing on his widely used SimSmoke computer model.
The model, created in 1998, has been commissioned to assess the effectiveness of tobacco-control policies in more than 20 countries.
Levy says increasing cigarette taxes even further will be key to future reductions in smoking levels. In March, then-health minister Jane Philpott announced the Trudeau government’s commitment to reduce smoking to less than five per cent of the population by 2035, from about 14.2 per cent currently.
Canadian governments have aggressively targeted smokers for the last two decades, with a series of restrictions on advertising and smoking locations, in addition to tax hikes. But “there is concern that the decline in smoking prevalence may have slowed,” Levy notes.
