Experts call for tobacco industry to pay for smoking cessation work

The tobacco industry should be forced to pay towards smoking cessation efforts in England as part of a new national tobacco control strategy, a multi-agency report has claimed.

Experts have called for a national annual levy on tobacco companies, fresh targets such as a drop in smoking rates to 5% by 2035, a new five year government tobacco strategy for England, and an increase to the tax escalator on tobacco products to 5% above the level of inflation.

The report, Smoking Still Kills,1 was published on 10 June by the public health charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and was jointly funded by ASH, Cancer Research UK, and the British Heart Foundation. …