Abstract:
smoking in Georgia in both health and economic perspectives. It describes
the changes in tobacco control policy, specifically, the amendments to Law
of Georgia on Tobacco Control (TCL) and tax measures, implemented since
2013. The article analyzes the effectiveness of these changes using the data
from Integrated Household Surveys (IHS) conducted by National Statistics
Office of Georgia (GeoStat). Resulted estimates of smoking prevalence
suggest that implemented tobacco control policy was successful in reducing
smoking in Georgia. At the same time, heterogeneous nature of taxation
of different tobacco products affects consumers’ choices by stimulating
downward substitution and shifting to smoking non-filtered and RYO
cigarettes, which could negatively affects the possible health benefits of
recent legislative and tax policies.
Description:
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