Raising taxes key to accelerate tobacco control in South Asia

On current smoking patterns, tobacco will kill about 1 billion people worldwide this century,12 including substantial numbers in the South Asian countries. All South Asian countries have signed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and have committed to the United Nations (UN) sustainable development goals (SDG), including to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by one third by 2030.3 Achieving this goal will depend on effective implementation of the tobacco control measures set out in the framework convention.4 The most important of these is large increases in the excise tax on tobacco products.

Here, we mostly focus on initiatives to control smoking because smoked tobacco causes more systemic diseases and has higher overall risks for the user than other forms of tobacco use. We also briefly review the status of smokeless tobacco.