Tripling tobacco tax 'could prevent 200 million early deaths'

This week, we learned about demands and elasticity in class. Today I want to talk about elasticity using tobacco as an example.

Tripling tobacco tax 'could prevent 200 million early deaths'

published January 2, 2014/Reuters

Researchers said on Wednesday that tripling tobacco tax globally would cut smoking by a third and prevent 200 million premature deaths this century from lung cancer and other diseases. In a review in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists from the charity Cancer Research UK (CRUK) said rising taxes by a large amount per cigarette would encourage people to quit smoking altogether rather than switch to cheaper brands, and help stop young people from taking up the habit, and it would affect not only in poor countries but also rich countries. Since tobacco kills almost 6 million of people a year, it will be good to put higher tax on tobacco as soon as possible. 

I agree with this article because in class I learned that products that are not necessity for people tend to be elastic, and tobaccos too are not necessity for people. Putting high taxes on tobaccos can make more opportunities for people who smoke to think whether or not to stop smoking because it will surely hurts their "wallet." However, I don't think only putting high tax on tobaccos is good way to cut people smoking, but making people aware how dangerous smoking is for our health is the first thing we need to do in order to cut people smoking.

The Article  <-- link to the article