Imposing a lifetime ban on cigarette sales to people born after a certain date would result in huge health benefits, according to research.
Imposing a lifetime ban on cigarette sales to anyone born after a certain date would result in huge health benefits in Canada, according to new research from an Ottawa academic.
University of Ottawa health economist Doug Coyle’s just-published research estimates that a so-called smoke-free generation policy would result in a $2.3 billion reduction in Canadian health care costs and add an estimated 476,814 life years over 50 years.
Coyle said banning tobacco sales based on year of birth would be more successful over time at stopping any uptake of smoking among younger people than current policies which restrict tobacco sales to those under 18 or, in some provinces including Ontario, under 19.
“Current legislation is ineffective as most long-term smokers initiate smoking prior to the legal age for smoking. Thus, a smoke-free generation policy avoids the vast health losses occurring due to uptake of smoking earlier than legally allowed,” he said. It would take several years to be fully effective but as the legal age to buy cigarettes rose, the risk of underage youth getting easy access to cigarettes would diminish, he said.
The research comes at a time when smoke-free generation policies are being debated in some countries and recommended by smoking cessation and public health officials in Canada and elsewhere. Ottawa Public Health is among the organizations that have called on the federal government to institute such a policy. A smoke-free generation bill was introduced in the UK last year, but it has not been passed into law. New Zealand had a law in place that was later repealed.
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“It is been a concept that has been talked about internationally for some years,” said Dr. Andrew Pipe, Canada’s foremost smoking cessation expert. Pipe, who is former chief of the prevention and rehabilitation at the uOttawa Heart Institute, is among those who have called on Canada to institute such a policy.
He said it is as important as ever to institute more effective policies to stop smoking, even with a significant decrease in smoking rates over recent decades.
“I think it is important to underscore that while rates of smoking have changed, it is still the leading cause of premature death and of unbelievable expenses that we as non-smoking taxpayers assume,” said Pipe.
Coyle noted that there are some signs there has been an uptick in tobacco use among younger Canadians associated with the rise of vaping – “something we thought we would never see.” In 2022 in Canada, there was a slight increase in the number of Canadians who are daily smokers, from 8.4 per cent to 9.1 per cent.
His research, believed to be the first of its kind, analyses the health impacts, and health savings, associated with implementing smoke-free generation policies in reduction of illnesses associated with smoking.
While the study found that such a policy would lead to significant health care savings and better health for Canadians, it also found that banning smoking for those under a certain age would result in a $7.4-billion drop in smoking-related taxes and $3.1 billion less in tobacco industry gross domestic product (GDP).
The study concludes that the value of health benefits outweighed the “negative offsets” of tobacco taxes and tobacco industry revenues.
In the study, Coyle wrote that he did not consider additional income tax raised by people living longer because of the policy. He wrote that a decline in tax revenues “is not a loss from a societal perspective as taxation is merely a transfer of funds from individuals to governments.” Smoking-related taxes are regressive and tend to target the poor, he said.
He also noted that reducing the consumption of tobacco would lead to more disposable income available “to consumer other resources”.
Coyle said the amount of health care costs saved according to the analysis “were much higher than I was expecting.” Before doing the analysis Coyle said he expected having fewer smoking-related deaths might actually increase health-care costs because many people would live longer, but that was not the case.
“The health gain here is huge There is an incredibly large number of health benefits across the population including all these smoking-related diseases and that individuals who smoke have a lower quality of life. There are so many positives. Smoking impacts so many diseases and recovery from diseases.”
Coyle said there is always pushback to suggestions of the policy, but he said the benefits are clear.
“From my perspective, this is something that we know causes direct harm to many Canadians yet it would be a very simple solution to try to put this in place to slowly eliminate the product from our country and realize the health benefits,” said Coyle.
Pipe said the research bolsters the case for a smoke-free generation policy in Canada.
The University of Ottawa Heart Institute’s 17th annual Ottawa conference on smoking cessation takes place Jan. 24-25 at the Shaw Centre.
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