PLoS medicine
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Countries are increasingly considering how to reduce or even end tobacco consumption, and raising tobacco taxes is a potential strategy to achieve these goals. We estimated the impacts on health, health inequalities, and health system costs of ongoing tobacco tax increases (10% annually from 2011 to 2031, compared to no tax increases from 2011 ["business as usual," BAU]), in a country (New Zealand) with large ethnic inequalities in smoking-related and noncommunicable disease (NCD) burden. ⋯ Ongoing tobacco tax increases deliver sizeable health gains and health sector cost savings and are likely to reduce health inequalities. However, if policy makers are to achieve more rapid reductions in the NCD burden and health inequalities, they will also need to complement tobacco tax increases with additional tobacco control interventions focused on cessation.
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Peter Hotez and Larry Peiperl argue that the world's poorest people may take on a disproportionate burden of noncommunicable diseases, even as their home countries gain in economic power.