20 February 2020
The new Tobacco Control Scale, launched today at the 8th European Conference on Tobacco or Health (ECToH), shows the United Kingdom, France and Ireland leading the ranking while Germany, Switzerland and Luxembourg continue to disappoint with extremely poor scores. The top score (UK) is twice as high as lowest one (Germany).
A new ranking report describes the results of a survey of tobacco control activity in 36 European countries in 2019. The Tobacco Control Scale quantifies the implementation of tobacco control policies at country level and is based on six policies described by the World Bank, which they say should be prioritised in a comprehensive tobacco control programme.
The new ranking is being presented today at the 8th European Conference on Tobacco or Health in Berlin by Luk Joossens of the Association of European Cancer Leagues (ECL). Countries spend less than 2 Euros per capita on tobacco control.
“The extremely poor score of Germany is not surprising for us,” explains Dr. Martina Pötschke-Langer, President of ECToH and CEO of the German Smokefree Alliance (ABNR). “Now is the time to act promptly and communicate the report’s results to those who can make a change, including the Ministries of Finances, Economy, Justice, Nutrition and Agriculture and Health. Priorities should be tobacco tax increases, comprehensive advertising and marketing bans, smokefree workplaces and public areas and effective smoking cessation programmes for smokers.”
Dr Sakari Karjalainen, President of ECL, welcomes the ranking update as “an important policy tool in encouraging countries to strengthen their weak spots in tobacco control.”
“We are very pleased that three countries with low scores in previous editions made huge progress.”
Israel, included in the survey for the first time, did very well in terms of price policies. Slovenia, Greece and Austria made spectacular progress and improved their score compared to 2016.
“Plain packaging for cigarettes exists now in eight countries and should be the standard for all countries in the European Region”, states Luk Joossens, the main author of the report.
Eight countries (UK, France, Ireland, Norway, Turkey, Slovenia, Belgium and Israel) have adopted and implemented plain packaging legislation. Hungary will implement its legislation in 2022, and the Netherlands and Denmark have agreed to introduce plain packaging very soon.
All countries assessed in the report, except for Switzerland, have ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and nineteen countries have ratified the WHO FCTC Protocol to eliminate the Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products.
