Apparently, the world's most expensive cigarettes are sold in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka has become the country selling the most expensive cigarettes in the world. This is according to a recent study conducted by Oxford Economics, based on an individual's purchasing power.

This research, citing data from the World Health Organization (WHO), has severely questioned the true effectiveness of the global tobacco tax percentage benchmark introduced by the WHO to minimize smoking.

Charging 75% of the price of a cigarette as tax is the WHO's global benchmark. However, the Oxford Economics report indicates that merely achieving this specific tax percentage does not automatically lead to a reduction in the number of smokers. They state that instead of chasing a global target, tobacco tax policies should be formulated by focusing on the vast economic differences between various countries and their true economic realities.

The most critical finding revealed by the research data is that there is no meaningful relationship between the tax rate included in the retail price of cigarettes and a country's overall smoking rate. Countries that have imposed a high tax percentage have not necessarily reported lower smoking levels. Accordingly, these findings raise a serious question about how effective it is to use a single global benchmark to measure the success of tobacco control or to plan tax strategies.

International organizations have previously drawn attention to the weakness of relying solely on tax targets for the successful implementation of tobacco control. This report reminds us that even a World Health Organization document acknowledges that relying solely on the tax percentage in the retail price is insufficient to curb tobacco demand.

Researchers acknowledge that taxation is an extremely important tool for tobacco control. However, tobacco taxation strategies should be evaluated considering factors such as national economic conditions, consumer purchasing power, and the prevalence of smoking. This latest assessment emphasizes that a country's progress in tobacco control should never be measured solely by the percentage of the cigarette's retail price allocated to taxes.