Experts fear Africa pandemic from rise in smoking
More than half the continent will double its tobacco use within 12 years if current trends continue, the American Cancer Society (ACS) said in a report which found that 90 percent of people living there have no protection from secondhand smoke.
Some African countries have introduced smoking bans but most have not, and smoke-free public areas are rare.
For the first time in history, we have the tools in hand to prevent a pandemic, Otis W. Brawley, the ACSs chief medical officer, said in a statement with the report, which was presented at a cancer conference in Tanzania.
Smoke-free public places are one example of a low-cost and extremely effective intervention that must be implemented now to protect health.
Many developed countries have tightened laws in recent years to make smoking unacceptable or illegal in public places such as bars, restaurants, offices and on public transport -- as a way to protect non-smokers and to discourage the habit.
Secondhand smoke is known to cause cancer in adults and lung problems such as pneumonia in young children.
Over the past four decades, smoking rates have fallen in rich countries such as the United States, Britain and Japan, but have been rising in much of the developing world.
The ACS estimates that smoking will kill 6 million people worldwide in 2010 and 72 percent of those killed will be from low- and middle-income countries.
In a report published in August, it said that around 50 percent of men in developing countries smoke..
Within the last year, Kenya and Niger have brought in national smoke-free policies, the ACS report said, also noting that South Africa has had anti-smoking policies since March 2007 and has managed to cut smoking rates.
But the report listed many other countries which have not taken effective action, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Uganda and Nigeria.
In Abuja, Nigeria, for example, 55 percent of school students are not aware that secondhand smoke is harmful to health, and only 1 percent of Nigerias population is protected by strong smoke-free laws, the report said.
Twalib Ngoma, president of the African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) which is hosting the conference, said smoking was increasing because the companies which used to target the West are now targeting countries like Tanzania.
Drive from the airport and you see a lot of billboards promoting cigarette smoking, he told Reuters. There might be small warning signs, but thats not enough to stop addicts from smoking -- and anyway a lot of people cant read.
The ACS called for more African governments to introduce anti-smoking legislation, and said other measures like charging high taxes on cigarettes had significant potential to cut smoking rates. Doubling the price of cigarettes by increasing the tax can lower consumption by fully 60 percent, it said.
Studies show smoking-related cancer deaths continue to worsen in Africa due to high consumption rate and since no further anti-tobacco policies from the government are being imposed to its constituents. It has called the attention of American Cancer Society (ACS) to appeal for African government to cut the latters alarming growth rate of consumption, and of second-hand smoking as well, primarily by increasing taxes on cigarettes like doubling the price of cigarettes to greatly lower consumption rate by 60.
Taxes on cigarettes have been commonly used by states across the world for income-generating purposes. But in recent years, charging higher taxes on cigarettes is used extensively in reducing cigarettes consumption due to health risks and abusive uses evident to active smokers, along with the negative effects to second-hand or passive smokers, as proven in the present situation in Africa where cancer deaths predominantly threatens the natives, and possibly become pandemic without proper precautionary measures. Whatever motives a government has, with the study on price elasticity of demand of cigarettes, government can be able to determine the amount of tax increment to be charge per unit where companies can still operate on a reasonable market price and objectively reduce smoking.
Price elasticity of demand measures the sensitivity of demand for cigarettes, like any other goods, after a particular change in its price. With the basic principles of PED, products are elastic if minimal change in price results to drastic change in the demand quantity, these include necessities and easily accessed products in the market while for inelastic ones, change in price affects only an insignificant change in the demand quantity, these goods consist of necessities, and no substitutes at hand. In the case of cigarettes, demand is viewed to be more inelastic than elastic, despite its non-necessity and easy availability attributes, because of smokers habitual consumption and no other substitutes, even alcohol or drugs, can replace its incomparable benefits among end-users.
Being inelastic in nature, smokers are willing to buy cigarettes at any given price and in effect, cigarette firms raise its prices at extreme levels to gain bigger margins. This is illustrated in Figure 1 graph below when producers significantly increase cigarettes prices (from p1 to p2), there would only be a slight decline on the quantity sold (from q2 to q1) which refers to the consumption rate of cigarettes. However, the government still manipulates the pricing policies of manufacturers through imposing higher taxes on cigarettes, rather than let the latter take advantage on the price insensitivity of its consumers. With this higher taxation rule, companies are forced to drop current ceiling on their selling rates, and may pass the additional costs enforced by government to consumers (technically termed as shifting the burden of the tax). As depicted in Figure 2, while demand for cigarettes is shown to be inelastic, excessive taxes add up on costs of cigarettes (p1 to p2), such increase in price results to a rise in supply as well (s1 to s2).
However, government must be cautious in implementing higher taxes because it might hurt the tobacco industry if excessive taxes would mean additional costs and product demand will totally diminish in due course, despite its inelasticity side because of some factors such as disposable incomes, economic status, and time. Rich countries and individuals with high disposable income are usually less responsive to changes in prices, compared to poor ones since their purchasing power is very low. With the poor economy in Africa, government must be really prudent in applying tax increases amount, because decline in consumption rate might eventually lower or lose the demand at large, where government revenues from import duties and excise taxes could go down in effect. Likewise, increasing taxes could also be more discriminatory and disproportionate to earnings of the poor inhabitants, a concept of tax regression, where they pay more of the tax out of their low income unlike with high-income countries or individuals which are hardly distressed of such increases. Also, cigarettes demand tends to be elastic in the long run, when consumers find it hard to cope up with rising costs after tax increases. Other important issues consequential to tax increases that government should anticipate is the emergence of smuggling and bootlegging of cigarettes in the black market that could badly impact on government funding and cigarettes industry while consumers, especially the low-income groups, would shift to alternative markets offering cheaper items, normally goods traded illicitly and do not comply with taxation laws.