introduction

While some countries have made significant progress over the past several years in formulating and implementing tobacco tax policies according to the WHO FCTC Article 6 Guidelines, the region as a whole is advancing very slowly. Most countries lack a long-term vision when it comes to the tobacco tax policy, and therefore do not evaluate nor update their policies regularly according to their social and public health targets. The obstacles to the compliance with the WHO FCTC Article 6 are complex tobacco tax structures, small or non-existent tax increases that fail to decrease the affordability of cigarettes, weak tax administration, and tobacco industry interference in both tobacco tax policy formulation and administration