Jump to full article: Canada Newswire (CNW) (ca), 2010-01-28
Author: NON-SMOKERS' RIGHTS ASSOCIATION
Intro: The Non-Smokers' Rights Association (NSRA) issued a sharp rebuke today to the tobacco industry's most recent call for a rollback in tobacco taxes. The health association released a critique by former World Health Organization economist Emmanuel Guindon in response to a Canadian Convenience Store Association study earlier this month that purported to justify tobacco tax cuts. The CCSA study claims that the tobacco tax rollbacks of 1994 had no impact on smoking rates or per capita consumption. This study is the latest stage of a campaign to force governments to cut tobacco taxes.
"The CCSA is the friendly neighbourhood face of Canadian Big Tobacco," said NSRA director of policy Melodie Tilson. "The claim in its analysis that giving Canadians in many provinces half price cigarettes in 1994 had no effect on consumption is utter nonsense. In fact, the increase in the use of tobacco industry products caused by the 1994 tax rollbacks will lead to the deaths of thousands of Canadians in the future." . . .
Condemnation of the CCSA for releasing a wrong-headed analysis of the 1994 tobacco tax rollbacks has been expressed by many health organizations including Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada. The CCSA study has also been severely criticized by a group of Quebec economists with Analysis Group on behalf of the Quebec Coalition for Tobacco Control. The two reports appear at www.nsra-adnf.ca.
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