CoRRE–an interactive data modeling tool–builds country-by-country scenarios to demonstrate how tobacco taxes generate millions in revenue and can help countries recover millions in smoking-related costs.
June 17, 2025 (New York)— Economics for Health at Johns Hopkins University, Vital Strategies and the American Cancer Society today released the Cost Recovery and Revenue Estimator (CoRRE), a new interactive modeling tool that demonstrates how countries can use tobacco taxes to reduce smoking, increase economic productivity and recover millions in health care expenses on treatment of smoking-related illnesses. Public health proponents are calling on countries to urgently adopt health taxes on harmful commodities, especially tobacco.
“Research commissioned by the Task Force on Fiscal Policy for Health shows if all countries increased their excise taxes on tobacco, alcohol and sugary beverages to raise prices by 50% it would raise over $3.7 trillion in just five years, and 50 million premature deaths would be prevented,” said Dr. Mary-Ann Etiebet, CEO and President of Vital Strategies. “As governments work to climb their way out of life-threatening health funding deficits, we hope that the Cost Recovery and Revenue Estimator (CoRRE) will serve as a valuable tool to help countries realize the triple win of saving lives, reducing health care costs and generating revenue.”
“The annual cost of tobacco is staggering: 8 million lives lost each year, around $2 trillion in economic damage, with much of that from the average of 11 years of life that smokers lose, which means much lower economic productivity,” said Jeff Drope, Research Professor and Director of the Economics for Health research team. “However, there is a solution: Tobacco taxes are the most effective and among the most underutilized strategies to prevent tobacco initiation, promote cessation and reduce overall tobacco use. Today, we’re proud to launch CoRRE–a powerful visualizing tool that can help estimate country by country what different tobacco tax approaches might mean for tax revenue, smoking prevalence, gains in income and savings in health care costs.”
Developed by Vital Strategies, American Cancer Society and Economics for Health at Johns Hopkins University, CoRRE is designed for the public health community, advocates and policymakers to assess the economic, and health, gains possible by raising tax on tobacco products. CoRRE uses recent data from more than 100 countries to estimate the tax revenue gain possible depending on different potential tax scenarios. For example, by raising taxes on a pack of cigarettes that grow the price from KSh 400 to 707 per pack, Kenya could raise an additional KSh 58 billion (equivalent to USD 490 million) a year in revenue, or 78% of the losses from recent cuts in overseas development assistance.
“Many countries continue to miss a vital opportunity to reap the benefits of the win-win strategy of higher tobacco taxes,” said the tool’s lead developer, Nigar Nargis, Senior Scientific Director at the American Cancer Society. “Decades of research shows that these tax reforms consistently raise considerable new tax revenues while saving lives and generally making societies healthier, including driving down the incidence of multiple cancers, among many other noncommunicable diseases.”
Tobacco taxes drive gains in health and economic resilience. According to the World Health Organization, a landmark 2012 health tax reform in the Philippines led to substantial reductions in tobacco use and large increases in tax revenues that have been used to support universal health coverage for Filipinos. In Colombia, the tax rate for cigarettes was tripled from 2016 to 2018 with a 4% real increase per year after 2019. Because of this increase, cigarette consumption fell by 34% by 2018, and tobacco excise tax revenues, which are allocated to help fund universal health coverage almost doubled.
The Cost Recovery and Revenue Estimator (CoRRE) was developed as part of the latest edition of The Tobacco Atlas, which also provides in-depth analysis on tobacco use prevalence, taxes and many other tobacco control policies and programs around the world.
Access the Cost Recovery and Revenue Estimator (CoRRE): http://tobaccoatlas.org/corre
About The Tobacco Atlas
The Tobacco Atlas compiles, validates and interprets global- and country-level data from multiple sources to present the best and most recent evidence, and builds a holistic and accurate picture of tobacco use, tobacco control, and the tobacco industry’s activities around the world. Policymakers, public health practitioners, advocates, journalists and the public can interact with the data online at tobaccoatlas.org. Produced with funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Atlas graphically details the scale of the tobacco epidemic, progress that has been made in tobacco control, and the latest products and tactics being deployed by the tobacco industry to grow its profits and delay or derail tobacco control efforts.
Learn more at www.tobaccoatlas.org.
About Vital Strategies
Vital Strategies is a global health organization that believes every person should be protected by a strong public health system. Our team combines evidence-based strategies with innovation to help develop and implement sound public health policies, manage programs efficiently, strengthen data systems, conduct research, and design strategic communication campaigns for policy and behavior change. To find out more, please visit www.vitalstrategies.org or Twitter @VitalStrat.
About Economics for Health
Based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of Health, Behavior & Society, we conduct economic research to demonstrate the effects of existing policies and chart pathways to new ones that promote healthier populations and more robust and equal economies. Our approach emphasizes collaboration among economists, health experts, key stakeholders, and decision-makers. Fiscal policies are pivotal drivers of everything, from the decision to smoke and consume alcohol, to food choices, and to environmental factors. In our work, we support researchers in low- and middle-income countries to build a local evidence base for effective economic policies like tax that can engender both improved public health and economic prosperity.
About American Cancer Society
We are a leading cancer-fighting organization with a vision to end cancer as we know it, for everyone. We are improving the lives of people with cancer and their families as the only organization combating cancer through advocacy, research, and patient support, to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to prevent, detect, treat, and survive cancer. We’ve invested more than $5 billion in cancer research since 1946, all to find more–and better–treatments, uncover factors that may cause cancer, and improve cancer patients’ quality of life. Please visit https://www.cancer.org/ to find more about us.