New E-Library on tobacco taxation and illicit trade will support researchers and policy makers

The WHO FCTC Secretariat’s Knowledge Hub on Tobacco Taxation and Illicit Trade, hosted by the Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products (REEP) at the University of Cape Town, recently launched an e-library on tobacco taxation and illicit trade in tobacco products.

This resource is intended for use by both researchers and policy makers. For researchers, the e-library can be used as a one-stop-shop for finding existing literature on a particular topic relating to tobacco tax and illicit trade. Policy makers can use the e-library as a tool to find information on their country or best practices in tobacco taxation and combatting illicit trade.

The purpose of the e-library is to consolidate and classify all available literature on tobacco taxation and the illicit trade in tobacco products. It is a searchable database, with links to more than 1,700 entries, in English, covering a variety of dissemination modes including journal articles, presentations, datasets and grey literature. Entries are indicated by whether they are available in the public domain/open access, or by subscription only.

Increasing tobacco taxes is a cost-effective policy tool, both from a public health and a fiscal perspective, and this new tool is a valuable contribution to research on tobacco taxation and illicit trade. It supports the implementation of Article 6 and Article 15 of the WHO FCTC, respectively.

The E-Library in more detail

The core of the e-library are the reference lists of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Handbook 14 Effectiveness of Price and Tax Policies for Tobacco Control (2011) as well as Chapters 4, 5 and 14 of the U.S. National Cancer Institute and WHO NCI Monograph No. 21 The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control (2017). It also includes more recent materials, published after these seminal reports. The Knowledge Hub plans to update the e-library on a monthly basis.

Publications in the e-library are classified according to a number of criteria, such as publication type (e.g. journal article, presentation, dataset), topic, region, and country income classification. Visitors can also use the search function to find literature published by a specific author, or information on a particular country.