TAX on cigarettes should be massively increased to pay for health measures such as a £10-a-week “reward” for pregnant women who give up smoking, a thinktank said today.
Policy Exchange said the cost to the public of smoking far outweighed the revenue from duty, leaving the taxpayer with a 6.5p bill for every cigarette smoked.
It called for a 5% hike in next week’s budget – a rise of 23p for a pack of 20 – and further rises over the next five years to ensure smoking became “revenue neutral”.
On current estimates that would see the cost of a pack rise by £1.29 to £7.42 over the course of the next Parliament through the use of an “escalator” system.
Its research found that while tax on tobacco raised £10bn a year for the Treasury, the annual cost of healthcare and other consequences of smoking totalled £13.74bn.
