WHO: higher tobacco taxes reduce consumption, but healthy ageing needs more investment

A new independent analysis by the World Health Organization covering 15 countries confirms that significant and regular increases in taxes on tobacco products help reduce their consumption, with positive effects on public revenues as well. The study examined cigarette tax reforms introduced between 2009 and 2025, finding that the best results were recorded in countries that raised taxes substantially and prevented rising incomes from making cigarettes affordable again.

This is an analysis that directly links the tax variable to consumer behaviour over a sixteen-year span, comparing reforms adopted in different countries. The WHO presents it as evidence supporting tobacco taxation policies as a public health tool, distinct from any measures directly restricting sale or consumption.

At the opposite end of the life course, a mid-term report on the “Decade of Healthy Ageing 2021-2030” — prepared by the World Health Organization together with the United Nations system, the World Bank and civil society organizations, and transmitted by the UN Secretary-General to the 81st General Assembly — notes that a growing number of countries are adopting policies to promote healthy ageing. The report warns, however, that turning longer lifespans into years actually lived in good health requires more substantial investment and more structured interventions than those currently in place.

The two reports concern distinct areas of global public health — tobacco taxation on the one hand, healthy ageing policies on the other — but share the same institutional subject and the same method: both are based on data collected on an international scale and over a multi-year period, rather than on a single episode or a single survey. The tobacco report covers sixteen years of tax reforms across 15 countries; the healthy ageing report arrives at the midpoint of the decade set by the United Nations, with the 2030 deadline still far off and investment levels described as insufficient relative to the goal.