Researchers call for larger tobacco tax rises

Tobacco is still affordable to many millions of smokers in the UK despite rising prices, a study suggests.

Researchers are calling for larger tax rises to make the country’s nine million smokers realise their habit is unaffordable.

They have developed a new way of calculating affordability for tobacco in the UK, which shows that despite price rises, smoking has only become a little less affordable but not enough to change behaviour.

Raising cigarette prices through tobacco taxation reduces smoking, but it is affected by smokers’ income and the prices of different types of brands and products.

Researchers at King’s College London and Bath University found that year-on-year the costs of tobacco products were rising – 2.6% for factorymade cigarettes and 4.5% for roll-yourown tobacco.

But despite falling incomes this only contributed to a small decrease in affordability among those most hooked on smoking.

In 2002, smokers of factory-made cigarettes kept 92% of their income after paying for their vice and by 2014 this had gone down to 88%.

For the first time, the researchers were able to assess the affordability of roll-your-own tobacco and found that this was more affordable.

Roll-your-own tobacco smokers kept 96.3% of their income after paying for their roll-ups in 2006 which went down to 93.7% in 2014.

The study is published in BMJ journal Tobacco Control.