Historique
Livre
Poor smokers
Article en page(s) :
87 p.
Domaine :
Tabac / Tobacco / e-cigarette
Langue(s) :
Anglais
Discipline :
SAN (Santé publique / Public health)
Résumé :
This report examines a growing policy dilemma. Tobacco taxes help to reduce smoking among the majority but have no effect at all on those who smoke most and can afford it least: Britain's poor families. Instead, smoking adds to the hardship they and their children experience.
Better off people have given up smoking in large numbers, but poorer people have not. There are now more poor families in Britain, especially growing numbers of lone parents, 6 out of ten of whom smoke. They are getting relatively poorer while smoking is getting relatively more costly.
The study interviewed 2,200 low income families, and took other evidence from major national surveys and the National Child Development Study. Smoking is highest among the most disadvantaged families: 3 out of 4 families on Income Support smoke and spend a seventh of their disposable income on cigarettes. Tobacco tax recovers for the Treasury 17 per cent of the means tested benefits paid to poor smokers by the DSS.
There is strong evidence that the cost of smoking adds to the hardship experienced both by adults and by children on poor smoking families and does so quite independently of other causes of hardship.
The report examines ways in which tobacco control policy might be linked to family welfare policy, and concludes...
"poor families are the last heartland of normative smoking. Only here are people still expected to smoke. Once smokers are a clear minority among this last host community for the habit, the trend will do the rest, just as it is doing among the better off. Once smoking has gone, it will not come back. One of the worst pandemics in the story of our national health will be over.
Better off people have given up smoking in large numbers, but poorer people have not. There are now more poor families in Britain, especially growing numbers of lone parents, 6 out of ten of whom smoke. They are getting relatively poorer while smoking is getting relatively more costly.
The study interviewed 2,200 low income families, and took other evidence from major national surveys and the National Child Development Study. Smoking is highest among the most disadvantaged families: 3 out of 4 families on Income Support smoke and spend a seventh of their disposable income on cigarettes. Tobacco tax recovers for the Treasury 17 per cent of the means tested benefits paid to poor smokers by the DSS.
There is strong evidence that the cost of smoking adds to the hardship experienced both by adults and by children on poor smoking families and does so quite independently of other causes of hardship.
The report examines ways in which tobacco control policy might be linked to family welfare policy, and concludes...
"poor families are the last heartland of normative smoking. Only here are people still expected to smoke. Once smokers are a clear minority among this last host community for the habit, the trend will do the rest, just as it is doing among the better off. Once smoking has gone, it will not come back. One of the worst pandemics in the story of our national health will be over.
Affiliation :
UK
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