Raise prices on sugary drinks, alcohol and tobacco by 50%, WHO suggests

Thomson Reuters

· Posted: Jul 02, 2025 4:26 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 hours ago

The World Health Organization is pushing countries to rise the prices of sugary drinks, alcohol and baccy by 50 per cent implicit the adjacent 10 years through taxation, its strongest backing yet for taxes to assistance tackle chronic nationalist wellness problems.
 
The United Nations wellness bureau said the determination would help cut depletion of the products, which lend to diseases like diabetes and immoderate cancers, arsenic good arsenic raising wealth astatine a time erstwhile improvement assistance is shrinking and nationalist indebtedness rising.
 
"Health taxes are 1 of the astir businesslike tools we have," said Jeremy Farrar, WHO assistant-director wide of health promotion and illness prevention and control. "It's clip to act."
 
The WHO launched the push, which it is called "3 by 35" at the UN Finance for Development league successful Seville, Spain.
 
WHO said that its taxation inaugural could rise $1 trillion US by 2035 based connected grounds from wellness taxes successful countries specified as Colombia and South Africa.
 
The WHO has backed baccy taxes and terms rises for decades, and has called for taxes connected intoxicant and sugary drinks in caller years. But this is the archetypal clip it has suggested a target terms emergence for each 3 products.

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WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the conference that the taxes could assistance governments "adjust to the new reality" and bolster their ain wellness systems with the money raised.
 
Many debased and middle-income countries are coping with cuts to aid spending led by the United States, which is not attending the Seville conference. The U.S. is besides successful the process of withdrawing from the WHO.

Raise prices from $4 to $10?

As an example, the inaugural would mean a authorities successful a middle-income state raising taxes connected the merchandise to propulsion the price up from $4 contiguous to $10 by 2035, taking into account inflation, said WHO wellness economist Guillermo Sandoval.
 
Nearly 140 countries had already raised baccy taxes and therefore prices by implicit 50 per cent on mean betwixt 2012 and 2022, the WHO added.