Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Jan;28(1):101-109.
doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-054119. Epub 2018 Feb 22.

Impact of tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence and quit ratios in 27 European Union countries from 2006 to 2014

Ariadna Feliu  1   2   3 , Filippos T Filippidis  4 , Luk Joossens  5 , Geoffrey T Fong  6   7 , Constantine I Vardavas  8   9 , Antoni Baena  1   3 , Yolanda Castellano  1   3 , Cristina Martínez  1   3   10 , Esteve Fernández  1   2   3
Affiliations

Impact of tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence and quit ratios in 27 European Union countries from 2006 to 2014

Ariadna Feliu et al. Tob Control. 2019 Jan.

Abstract

Background: Tobacco use is still highly prevalent in Europe, despite the tobacco control efforts made by the governments. The development of tobacco control policies varies substantially across countries. The Tobacco Control Scale (TCS) was introduced to quantify the implementation of tobacco control policies across European countries OBJECTIVE: To assess the midterm association of tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence and quit ratios among 27 European Union (EU) Member States (EU27).

Methods: Ecological study. We used the TCS in EU27 in 2007 and the prevalence of tobacco and quit ratios data from the Eurobarometer survey (2006 (n=27 585) and 2014 (n=26 793)). We analysed the relationship between the TCS scores and smoking prevalence and quit ratios and their relative changes (between 2006 and 2014) by means of scatter plots and multiple linear regression models.

Results: In EU27, countries with higher scores in the TCS, which indicates higher tobacco control efforts, have lower prevalence of smokers, higher quit ratios and higher relative decreases in their prevalence rates of smokers over the last decade. The correlation between TCS scores and smoking prevalence (rsp=-0.444; P=0.02) and between the relative changes in smoking prevalence (rsp=-0.415; P=0.03) was negative. A positive correlation was observed between TCS scores and quit ratios (rsp=0.373; P=0.06). The percentage of smoking prevalence explained by all TCS components was 28.9%.

Conclusion: EU27 should continue implementing comprehensive tobacco control policies as they are key for reducing the prevalence of smoking and an increase tobacco cessation rates in their population.

Keywords: advertising and promotion; packaging and labelling; price; public policy; surveillance and monitoring.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) Smoking prevalence in 2014, (B) relative change of the smoking prevalence from 2006 to 2014, (C) quit ratio in 2014 and (D) relative change of quit ratios between 2006 and 2014 in 27 European Union countries (EU27). For relative changes, intervals have been determined by quartiles from 0%.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Tobacco Control Scale (TCS) total scores by its components in 2007 for the 27 European Union countries.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(A) Correlation between Tobacco Control Scale (TCS) total scores in 2007 and the smoking prevalence in 2014 (left) and the relative changes of smoking prevalence between 2006 and 2014 (right) in the EU27. (B) Correlation between TCS total score in 2007 and quit ratios in 2014 (left) and the relative change of quit ratio between 2006 and 2014 (right) in the EU27. *P<0.05. EU, Europen Union; rsp, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. European Commission. Eurobarometer 429, special tobacco. Brussels, 2015. http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_429_en.pdf (accessed 30 Oct 2016).
    1. Hill S, Amos A, Clifford D, et al. . Impact of tobacco control interventions on socioeconomic inequalities in smoking: review of the evidence. Tob Control 2014;23:e89–97. 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2013-051110 - DOI - PubMed
    1. World Health Organization. Tobacco. Data and statistics. 2017. http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/disease-prevention/tobacco/data... (accessed 25 Apr 2017).
    1. Currie LM, Blackman K, Clancy L, et al. . The effect of tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence and smoking-attributable deaths in Ireland using the IrelandSS simulation model. Tob Control 2013;22:e25–e32. 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2011-050248 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Joossens L, Raw M. The Tobacco Control Scale: a new scale to measure country activity. Tob Control 2006;15:247–53. 10.1136/tc.2005.015347 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types