Thread by @kgcheng3

Hi everyone! I am happy to share this thread about our #IAPHS2020 @ia4phs poster presentation in entitled “Whose cigarette smoking behavior is most affected by the Philippine Sin Tax Reform Act?” 1/n

This work is coauthored with @rmlacaza and Miguel Antonio Estrada from the University of the Philippines @Official_UPD. I have been nagging Miguel to be on twitter because he is missing out on a lot of cool stuff here. 😅 2/n

Anyway, our study aims to examine how individual, social support, and community or societal-level factors determine whether Filipino smokers are affected by the 2012 cigarette price increase and how affected smokers changed their smoking behavior. 3/n

Context: The Philippines is a high smoking prevalence country. 33.9% males and 3.6% females smoke and each year, more than 117,700 Filipinos die due to smoking-related illnesses (Tobacco Atlas). This is why we care. 4/n

Context: Cigarettes were dirt cheap before a series of excise tax reforms were enacted. Before 2012, one stick was as cheap as one peso. A peso is about 2 US cents. 5/n

The tax increase due to the 2012 reform is considerably sharp: a pack of cigarettes costing 9 US cents taxed 5 US cents pre-reform was taxed 24 cents in 2013 or post-reform. In effect, the tax was increased about 5x the rate of the pre-reform period. 6/n

We used the 2015 Philippine Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) data that asked smokers to report whether they were affected by the price increase brought about by the reform or not. Those who said they were affected were asked how they adjusted their smoking behavior. 7/n

Of the 2,507 smokers in the sample, 67% or 1,669 said they were affected by the price increase brought about by the 2012 sin tax reform. Among those affected, 64% said they made an attempt to stop and 71% of them said they thought of quitting. 8/n

Without going to too many details, we found that those with lower wealth levels and lower levels of addiction to tobacco are more likely to say that their smoking behavior was affected by the price increase due to the 2012 sin tax reform act. 9/n

Our study may be useful to you @TaxTobaccoMax @DOHgovph. We will fill you in with more details after we finalize the study. 10/n