MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguayan university study favors taxation on cigarettes

At least 15% of adult deaths in Uruguay are believed to be caused by smoking

In Montevideo, a Universidad de la República (Udelaar) study projected that a 60% increase in cigarette taxes from 2025 to 2028 would reduce smoking by 19%, preventing 49,000 smokers, and increase tax revenue by 24%, aligning with World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations.

The research, led by Patricia Triunfo and Zuleika Ferre, analyzed data from 1997 to 2022, confirming that Uruguay’s anti-smoking policies since 2010 have significantly lowered consumption.

The study highlights a price elasticity of -0.47, indicating tax hikes effectively reduce demand. Smoking accounts for 15% of adult deaths in Uruguay, 16.7% of health expenditure, and 50% of smokers die prematurely.

The tax increase would improve health outcomes without reducing state revenue, reinforcing Uruguay’s leadership in anti-smoking efforts. Challenges include isolating policy impacts and limited research funding.

“Evaluating public policies is a challenge because of how they are implemented, sometimes in simultaneous layers,” said Triunfo. Their work included collaborations with Jeffrey Harris of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and funding from the Bloomberg Foundation.

In 2012, they published an analysis in The Lancet comparing Uruguay with Argentina, which did not adopt comprehensive anti-smoking policies until 2011. The study confirmed that the Uruguayan measures reduced consumption in a “substantial and unprecedented” way.

“The big drama is to demonstrate causality between policies and reduction of smoking,” Triunfo also noted. For this study, they used aggregate data on legal cigarette sales, combined with variables such as prices, income, and regulations.

“Reconstructing monthly time series was key,” Ferre highlighted. Both researchers from the Udelar's School of Social Sciences are currently working on another analysis with Uruguay's National Institute of Statistics (INE) data on household expenditures to evaluate socioeconomic differences in consumption. “Lowering consumption would not reduce revenue,” Ferre insisted.

Although “green energy” or “sustainable production” are promoted, contradictory decisions persist, such as projects that affect watersheds. Triunfo pointed out that, despite rhetoric on science, investment in research “continues to stagnate”, limiting the capacity to generate evidence applicable to public policies.