The World Health Organization recommends a 50 % increase in prices for sugary drinks, alcohol and tobacco over ten years, via new taxes. Objective: to reduce the consumption of these harmful products and generate resources for health systems.
Faced with the increase in chronic diseases and the decline in development aid, the World Health Organization (WHO) offers a bold solution: establishing taxes for harmful health products, with the aim of increasing the prices by 50% by 2035.
This initiative, called “3 by 35”, was presented at the United Nations Conference on the financing of development held in Seville. It concerns three categories of products: tobacco, alcohol and sugary drinks, identified as major diseases of diseases such as diabetes, cancers and cardiovascular conditions.
According to WHO, such a tax policy could bring up to $ 1,000 billion by 2035, while saving millions of lives thanks to the drop in consumption. The experience of countries like Colombia or South Africa, which have already implemented similar taxes, strengthens the credibility of this approach.
WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stressed that these taxes could help States adapt to the new budgetary reality, by funding their own health systems more autonomously, while many countries have to face the reduction of international aid, especially from the United States.
If the WHO long has pleaded for taxes on tobacco, it is the first time that it offers a quantified and common target for the three products. She thus hopes to arouse global mobilization, up to the health and economic issues of this decade.
