Taxes, prices and illicit trade: the need for sound evidence

Extensive research from around the world has documented the effectiveness of tobacco tax and price increases in reducing tobacco use by promoting cessation among current users, deterring young people from taking up tobacco use, and reducing how much continuing users consume. Internal tobacco company documents show that the industry clearly understands this and that this knowledge informs its pricing, marketing, lobbying and other strategies. The collection of papers in this special issue addresses various aspects of how this plays out in practice and provides options for maximising the effectiveness of tax and price policies for achieving public health goals. Exaggerating the role of tax and price levels and differentials for tobacco products in increasing illicit trade is a key element of the tobacco industry's playbook for discouraging governments from adopting higher taxes and, increasingly, for opposing other tobacco control policies, including strong graphic warning labels, plain packaging, bans on flavoured products, and other product standards. Several of the papers in this issue highlight how the industry distorts the data and misleads the public and policy makers on the issue of illicit tobacco trade. Rowell et al 1 highlight how the industry has produced estimates of the extent of illicit trade in the UK to argue that the problem has increased over time and has been effective in getting this argument into the popular press, thus creating the incorrect impression that illicit trade in the UK is high and rising, while objective data show the opposite. Similarly, van Walbeek2 uses revenue data to show that illicit tobacco trade in South Africa has not been consistently rising over time, contrary to industry claims that it had increased sharply and steadily since the 1990s, costing the government considerable revenues. …