Tobacco control in Nepal during a time of government turmoil (1960-2006).

BACKGROUND: Nepal was a monarchy, then a dictatorship, then a democracy. This paper reviews how tobacco control progressed in Nepal in the context of these changes in government from 1950 through 2006. METHODS: We triangulated tobacco industry documents, newspaper articles and key informant interviews. RESULTS: Until 1983, the tobacco industry was mostly state owned. Transnational tobacco companies entered the Nepalese market through ventures with Surya Tobacco Company Private Limited (with Imperial Tobacco Company and British American Tobacco) in 1983 and Seti Cigarette Factory Limited (with Philip Morris International [PMI]) in 1985. Seminars and conferences on tobacco, celebrations of World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) and efforts by WHO helped promote tobacco control in Nepal beginning in the 1970s. Tobacco advocates in Nepal pushed the government to issue executive orders banning smoking in public places in 1992 and tobacco advertising in electronic media in 1998, and to introduce a tobacco health tax in 1993. The tobacco industry lobbied against these measures and succeeded in keeping the tobacco tax low by challenging it in court. Tobacco advocates sued the government in 2003 and 2005, resulting in a June 2006 Supreme Court decision upholding the smoking and advertising bans and requiring the government to enact a comprehensive tobacco control law. CONCLUSIONS: Political instability, conflict, weak governance and the dictatorship significantly affect tobacco control activities in low-income and middle-income countries. Nepal shows that tobacco control advocates can take advantage of global events, such as WNTD, and use domestic litigation to maintain support from civil societies and to advocate for stronger tobacco control policies.

Estimating the effects of cigarette taxes on birth outcomes.

Employing provincial data from 1979 to 2004 allows us to exploit the significant (45 percent to 60 percent) reduction in excise taxes in Eastern Canada enacted in February 1994 to estimate the impacts of cigarette taxes on birth outcomes. Empirical estimates suggest that an increase in cigarette taxes is significantly associated with lower infant mortalities. However, we also find some evidence of a counter-intuitive positive correlation between taxes and fetal deaths. Overall, conditional on methodology, we find increased lagged per capita health expenditures and the number of physicians to be significantly associated with improvements in birth outcomes.

The psychohistorical roots of the American "Tea Party" Movement.

Extreme resistance to governmental taxation and authority is derived, according to Freud's theory of anal characterology, from premature and harshly coercive toilet training, in which a child is forced unfairly and against its will to surrender the products of his eliminations (which represent money, among other things, in the unconscious) to parental authority. Among these individuals anal eroticism plays a significant role in the psychogenesis of paranoia and conspiracy theorizing, which may represent a defense mechanism erected against repressed fears of passive submission.

"Our reach is wide by any corporate standard": how the tobacco industry helped defeat the Clinton health plan and why it matters now.

Contemporary health care reformers, like those who promoted the failed Clinton era plan, face opposition from multiple corporate interests. However, scant literature has examined how relationships between corporations and other stakeholders, such as think tanks and advocacy groups, shape health care reform debate. We show how the 2 biggest US tobacco companies, Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, and their trade association coordinated in mobilizing ideologically diverse constituencies to help defeat the Clinton plan. Unwittingly perhaps, some reform supporters advanced the tobacco industry's public relations blitz, contributing to perceptions of public opposition to the plan. As the current reform debate unfolds, this case highlights the importance of funding transparency for interpreting the activities of think tanks, advocacy groups, and "grassroots" movements.

[Regulation of drug prices in nineteenth-century Bazilian pharmacy]. / O Regimento dos preços dos medicamentos... na farmácia brasileira oitocentista.

On November 5th, 1808, D. João de Bragança issued a license about the practice of druggists and the price of drugs and ordered the creation of a regulation to tax the cost of medicines marketed in Brazil. First published on 1809, the Regimento dos preços dos medicamentos... gained new editions in the following years and became an indispensable working tool for those involved in the making and trading of drugs at this time. This paper situates historically and sheds light on a document briefly explored by the researchers of the history of the Brazilian pharmacy, taking into account that it was one of the first initiatives of the Luso-Brazilian government in line with the pharmaceutical activity in Brazil in the nineteenth century.

Em 5 de novembro de 1808, dom João de Bragança promulgou um alvará sobre o exercício dos boticários e o preço das drogas e ordenou a criação de um regulamento para taxar o custo dos medicamentos comercializados no Brasil. Publicado pela primeira vez em 1809, o Regimento dos preços dos medicamentos... ganhou novas edições nos anos subsequentes e tornou-se um indispensável instrumento de trabalho para os envolvidos com a feitura e o comércio dos remédios. Este texto situa historicamente e destaca esse documento brevemente explorado pelos pesquisadores da história da farmácia brasileira, visto ter sido uma das primeiras iniciativas do governo luso-brasileiro condizentes com a atividade farmacêutica no Brasil no século XIX.

The 20-year impact of tobacco price and tobacco control expenditure increases in Minnesota, 1998-2017.

INTRODUCTION: Tobacco control programs and policies reduce tobacco use and prevent health and economic harms. The majority of tobacco control programs and policies in the United States are implemented at local and state levels. Yet the literature on state-level initiatives reports a limited set of outcomes. To facilitate decision-making that is increasingly focused on costs, we provide estimates of a broader set of measures of the impact of tobacco control policy, including smoking prevalence, disease events, deaths, medical costs, productivity and tobacco tax revenues, using the experience of Minnesota as an example. METHODS: Using the HealthPartners Institute's ModelHealth™: Tobacco MN microsimulation, we assessed the impact of the stream of tobacco control expenditures and cigarette price increases from 1998 to 2017. We simulated 1.3 million individuals representative of the Minnesota population. RESULTS: The simulation estimated that increased expenditures on tobacco control above 1997 levels prevented 38,400 cancer, cardiovascular, diabetes and respiratory disease events and 4,100 deaths over 20 years. Increased prices prevented 14,600 additional events and 1,700 additional deaths. Both the net increase in tax revenues and the reduction in medical costs were greater than the additional investments in tobacco control. CONCLUSION: Combined, the policies address both short-term and long-term goals to reduce the harms of tobacco by helping adults who wish to quit smoking and deterring youth from starting to smoke. States can pay for initial investments in tobacco control through tax increases and recoup those investments through reduced expenditures on medical care.

Building alliances in unlikely places: progressive allies and the Tobacco Institute's coalition strategy on cigarette excise taxes.

The tobacco industry often utilizes third parties to advance its policy agenda. One such utilization occurred when the industry identified organized labor and progressive groups as potential allies whose advocacy could undermine public support for excise tax increases. To attract such collaboration, the industry framed the issue as one of tax fairness, creating a labor management committee to provide distance from tobacco companies and furthering progressive allies' interests through financial and logistical support. Internal industry documents indicate that this strategic use of ideas, institutions, and interests facilitated the recruitment of leading progressive organizations as allies. By placing excise taxes within a strategic policy nexus that promotes mutual public interest goals, public health advocates may use a similar strategy in forging their own excise tax coalitions.

"A whole 'nother smoke" or a cigarette in disguise: how RJ Reynolds reframed the image of little cigars.

Present-day consumption of little cigars rivals that of the early 1970s when sales of little cigars boomed. This boom was largely attributed to RJ Reynolds, and documents reveal how and why they became a powerful force in little cigar sales. RJ Reynolds designed a little cigar, Winchesters, for cigarette smokers and produced one as close to a cigarette as legally possible. Initially, RJ Reynolds intended to capitalize on the cigarette advertising broadcast ban, but the price and tax structure was more critical to Winchester's success. Today, the tobacco industry is fighting again to sustain its unique application of federal definitions for little cigars. Regulatory efforts are needed to close taxation loopholes for the little cigar.

Financing Social Security, 1939-1949: a reexamination of the financing policies of this period.

This article examines the financing history of the U.S. Social Security system during the period starting with the amendments of 1939 and concluding with the amendments of 1950. It reviews the program's financing policies during this period, and in particular, a series of tax-rate "freezes" enacted during this time. The tax-rate schedule codified in the Social Security Act of 1935 was prevented from taking full effect during these years and the rates were "frozen" at their 1935 level for 15 years. This article seeks to explain the policy context of these rate freezes and their impact on the program's long-range financial solvency. Two major findings emerge from this research: 1. One of the most basic tests of any policy proposal involving Social Security is the projected impact of that proposal on the program's short-range and long-range financing. It would be virtually impossible to propose any serious policy change without a certification from the Social Security actuaries regarding the potential impact of such change. Although Congress enacted the 1939-1949 rate freezes in eight separate legislative acts, the legislative history contains no useable long-range actuarial estimates to gauge the impact of the rate freezes on program financing. How and why such an anomalous circumstance could arise is explored here. cies and has discovered that throughout the period from 1939 to 1950, the Social Security program was almost certainly rendered out of long-range actuarial balance by the rate freezes. How such a circumstance could arise, without serious policy debate, is then examined by situating the rate-freeze decisions in the larger frame of Social Security policymaking during this period.

O Regimento dos preços dos medicamentos... na farmácia brasileira oitocentista / Regulation of drug prices in nineteenth-century Bazilian pharmacy

Resumo Em 5 de novembro de 1808, dom João de Bragança promulgou um alvará sobre o exercício dos boticários e o preço das drogas e ordenou a criação de um regulamento para taxar o custo dos medicamentos comercializados no Brasil. Publicado pela primeira vez em 1809, o Regimento dos preços dos medicamentos... ganhou novas edições nos anos subsequentes e tornou-se um indispensável instrumento de trabalho para os envolvidos com a feitura e o comércio dos remédios. Este texto situa historicamente e destaca esse documento brevemente explorado pelos pesquisadores da história da farmácia brasileira, visto ter sido uma das primeiras iniciativas do governo luso-brasileiro condizentes com a atividade farmacêutica no Brasil no século XIX.

Abstract On November 5th, 1808, D. João de Bragança issued a license about the practice of druggists and the price of drugs and ordered the creation of a regulation to tax the cost of medicines marketed in Brazil. First published on 1809, the Regimento dos preços dos medicamentos... gained new editions in the following years and became an indispensable working tool for those involved in the making and trading of drugs at this time. This paper situates historically and sheds light on a document briefly explored by the researchers of the history of the Brazilian pharmacy, taking into account that it was one of the first initiatives of the Luso-Brazilian government in line with the pharmaceutical activity in Brazil in the nineteenth century.

Historical redistribution under the Social Security Disability Insurance Program.

This study uses Social Security administrative data on historical taxes and benefits by year, age, gender, and race for an ex post analysis of redistribution under the Disability Insurance (DI) program. The relationship between the taxes paid and benefits received to date under the program is described for successive cohorts as a whole and for specific race and gender groups both within cohorts and across time.

Proto-industrialization, sharecropping, and outmigration in nineteenth-century rural Westphalia.

This article examines proto-industrialization and the social relations of production in a rural parish in eastern Westphalia that experienced large-scale outmigration to the American Midwest in the mid-nineteenth century. Relying on local and individual-level Prussian tax and emigration records, the study identifies and analyses the socio-economic background of the migrant cohort in terms of proto-industrial activity and peasant economy. Preceded by the downfall of domestic textile industries due to British industrial competition, outmigration was highly selective, drawing individuals from specific socio-economic niches. Landless sharecroppers - linked by debt and labour obligations to better-off peasants and landlords - were underrepresented in the migration, while smallholding peasants and day-labourers - 'free' to commodify their labour power through the sale of home-produced textile products or seasonal migratory labour - were overrepresented. The findings of the study have implications for an understanding of the localized nature of the relations of production in proto-industrial regions, the historical nature of German emigrations, and the dynamics of the German transition to industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century.

Saying yes to taxes: the politics of tax reform campaigns in three northwestern states, 1965-1973.

This article analyzes factors shaping popular support for new taxes by examining variation in the outcomes of votes in nine American states during the 1960s and early 1970s. New taxes were endorsed in five states but rejected in four. Using comparative and historical methods focused on the cases of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, the author argues that the sequence of policy making shapes popular vetoes through three mechanisms: the mobilization of interest groups, the information available to voters about a policy, and how the costs and benefits of a policy appear to voters. The findings demonstrate that voter perceptions of the potential gains and losses of a new policy are sociologically mobilized through the policy process. Controlling when popular veto points appear in a policy process is an understudied strategy that is employed by American state builders to overcome ambivalence toward the fiscal imperatives of the activist state.

Current status of tobacco policy and control.

Behaviors pertaining to tobacco use have changed significantly over the past century. Compared with 1964, smoking prevalence rates have halved from 40% to 20%, and as a result there has been a slow but steady decline in the rates of tobacco-induced diseases such as heart disease and cancer. Growing awareness of the health risks of smoking was aided by the US Surgeon Reports that were issued on a nearly annual basis starting from 1964. Concerns about the hazards of breathing in second-hand smoke further contributed to the declining social acceptance of smoking, which evolved into regulatory actions restricting smoking on buses, planes, retail outlets, restaurants, and bars. Today, 23 states and 493 localities have comprehensive laws restricting indoor smoking. This paper examines public policies that have made a significant impact on smoking and lung cancer rates and discusses potential future research directions to further reduce the diseases caused by smoking.

Estimating preferences for local public services using migration data.

Using Swedish micro data, the paper examines the impact of local public services on community choice. The choice of community is modelled as a choice between a discrete set of alternatives. It is found that, given taxes, high spending on child care attracts migrants. Less conclusive results are obtained with respect to the role of spending on education and elderly care. High local taxes deter migrants. Relaxing the independence of the irrelevant alternatives assumption, by estimating a mixed logit model, has a significant impact on the results.

Between state power and popular desire: tobacco in pre-conquest Manchuria, 1600-1644.

Tobacco entered Manchuria on the same wave of early modern globalization that brought it from the Americas to other parts of Eurasia in the early seventeenth century. Introduced into northeast Asia sometime after 1600, it began to circulate widely in Manchuria precisely at a time when Hong Taiji (1592-1643) was building the early Qing state. This essay examines Hong Taiji's efforts to criminalize tobacco in the 1630s and 1640s, arguing that these prohibitions were largely directed at gaining state control over a valuable economic resource. However, within the commercialized milieu of seventeenth-century Liaodong, a region with ties to broader transregional circuits of trade, tobacco's lucrative profits and its pleasurable allure simply overpowered state efforts to monopolize it. As in most other early seventeenth-century Eurasian societies, the Qing tobacco bans quickly gave way to legalization and taxation.

An effective model of institutional taxation: lunatic asylums in nineteenth-century England.

The compulsory establishment of large public lunatic asylums under Act of parliament in the nineteenth century to address the enormous increase in the number of the insane raised legal and practical challenges in relation to their status within the law of tax. As a result of their therapeutic and custodial objectives, these novel institutions required extensive landed property and very specific systems of governance, the fiscal consequences of which potentially undermined those very objectives. This article examines and analyses the nature and legal process of the application of the tax regime to these asylums, concluding that it constituted a rare and effective model of institutional taxation.