The synergistic effect of cigarette taxes on the consumption of cigarettes, alcohol and betel nuts

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Consumption of cigarettes and alcoholic beverages creates serious health consequences for individuals and overwhelming financial burdens for governments around the world. In Asia, a third stimulant – betel nuts – increases this burden exponentially. For example, individuals who simultaneously smoke, chew betel nuts and drink alcohol are approximately 123 times more likely to develop oral, pharyngeal and laryngeal cancer than are those who do not.</p> <p>To discourage consumption of cigarettes, the government of Taiwan has imposed three taxes over the last two decades. It now wishes to lower consumption of betel nuts. To assist in this effort, our study poses two questions: 1) Will the imposition of an NT$10 Health Tax on cigarettes effectively reduce cigarette consumption? and 2) Will this cigarette tax also reduce consumption of alcoholic beverages and betel nuts? To answer these questions, we analyze the effect of the NT$10 tax on overall cigarette consumption as well as the cross price elasticities of cigarettes, betel nuts, and alcoholic beverages.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>To establish the Central Bureau of Statistics demand function, we used cigarette, betel nut, and alcoholic beverage price and sales volume data for the years 1972–2002. To estimate the overall demand price elasticity of cigarettes, betel nuts, and alcoholic beverages, we used a seemingly unrelated regression analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We find that the NT$10 health tax on cigarettes will reduce cigarette consumption by a significant 27.22$10 health tax on cigarettes will reduce betel nut consumption by 20.07% and alcohol consumption by 7.5%.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The assessment of a health tax on cigarettes as a smoking control policy tool yields a win-win outcome for both government and consumers because it not only reduces cigarette consumption, but it also reduces betel nut and alcoholic beverage consumption due to a synergistic relationship. Revenues generated by the tax can be used to fund city and county smoking control programs as well as to meet the health insurance system's current financial shortfall.</p

Public and private veterinary services in West and Central Africa: policy failures and opportunities

The livestock sector in most African countries, in particular in the Sahel region, remains underexploited. It is traditionally managed in pastoralist systems that best guarantee the environmental sustainability of the arid and semi-arid grasslands, which can be hardly used for agriculture. However, pastoralists are vulnerable to exclusion to social services because they are remote to educational and political centres. The majority of livestock, however, are kept in mixed crop-livestock systems in which livestock have multiple roles such as producing food, generating income, providing manure, producing power, being financial instruments and enhancing social status. Livestock breeding faces many challenges and constraints including transboundary animal diseases (TADs) and increasing waves of droughts due to climate change as well as politically and economically instable states. Despite that Sahelian livestock owners have robust empirical methods to protect their basis of livelihood-their livestock-they need and appreciate quality medicines, vaccines and veterinary services. Operational veterinary services are at the heart of controlling important livestock diseases to reduce impacts on livelihoods. There are effective control measures such as anthrax vaccination of livestock that also safeguard human health. Veterinary services are equally at the heart of early detection of TADs and surveillance and response to epidemic and zoonotic diseases. But how can the services, composed of public and private veterinarians, veterinary technicians, community animal health workers and outreach services, meat inspectors and monitoring/surveillance professionals, better ensure and satisfy the needs of livestock owners, their families and other stakeholders such as public health and rural development? Which roles do international and national policies play? We review the status of veterinary services in the Sahel over the last 20 years and relate their provided services to overarching policy changes such as the privatisation of veterinary services and external funding schemes and programmes. We conclude on new ways forward such as implementation of intersectoral collaborations of professionals in remote Sahelian zones and needed operational research in optimising services