Case Study: Increasing Tobacco Price to Reduce the Burden of Chronic Diseases in Luxembourg

Price increases are considered as one of the most efficient ways to decrease tobacco use and the resulting harms to health. Our model investigates the extent to which reductions in tobacco consumption could affect the prevalence of smoking-related diseases in Luxembourg. We simulated the effect of three hypothetical price increases on the prevalence of smoking and the resulting changes in the prevalence of chronic respiratory disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and stroke among the population aged 50 years and above. The results show that substantial reductions can be expected for chronic respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. These reductions would start appearing almost immediately after implementing the first price increases and remain even after 20 years from the first increase.