Date:2020-10-1 14:53:30 Clicks:862 【Font Size:
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MPOWER is a series of tobacco control measures proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to assist countries to reduce tobacco use, where “M” refers to monitoring tobacco use, “P” to protecting people from tobacco smoke, “O” to offering help to quit tobacco use, “W” to warning about the dangers of tobacco, “E” to enforcing bans on tobacco advertising and promotion, and “R” to raising tax on tobacco products.
A recent study evaluated the implementation of the MPOWER measures worldwide by investigating the progress from 2008 to 2016 and the association with smoking prevalence. It found that MPOWER implementation was improved and smoking was reduced in most countries in nearly a decade after WHO proposed the measures. Improvements were mainly observed for the MPOWE measures (i.e. monitoring, protecting, offering help, warning and enforce ban on advertising), while the advance in R measures (i.e. raising tax) was small, especially in countries with lower initial smoking prevalence. Except for countries with weak initial tobacco control policies and low initial smoking prevalence, greater improvements in MPOWER implementation was associated with reduced smoking prevalence.
According to WHO, raising tobacco tax is the single most effective measures to reduce tobacco use by motivating smokers to quit and preventing youth uptake of smoking. WHO recommends that tobacco tax should account for at least 75% of the cigarette retail price. The above study also found that 1 percentage point increase in cigarettes tax rate was associated with 0.07 percentage point decrease in smoking prevalence in upper-middle-income countries and high-income countries.
The Hong Kong Government has been adopting multipronged tobacco control measures since 1982, progressively reducing the smoking prevalence to 10.2%. COSH strongly advises the Government to continue the strategies and strengthen the MPOWER measures, particularly raising tobacco tax increase.