Publication: Reforming Health Taxes to Improve Mexico’s Health
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2025-08-27
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2025-09-17
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Improvements on excise taxes on tobacco, alcoholic beverages, and Sugar-Sweetened Beverages (SSBs) are urgently needed in Mexico to reduce preventable premature deaths. In Mexico, 125,350 people lose their lives annually due to the use of these products. Beyond the health toll, consumption of these products also carries significant fiscal implications. In the case of tobacco products, the fiscal cost amounts to 0.8 percent of GDP each year (Saenz-de-Miera, Reynales-Shigematsu, et al. 2024), yet tobacco tax revenues, at 0.16 percent of GDP, are only a fraction of these costs. Improving these taxes in Mexico requires incorporating specific components in beverages that vary by alcohol and sugar content and setting high specific rates across all three product categories. Simultaneous implementation of other effective population-level interventions is necessary to have a comprehensive strategy to reduce preventable deaths. In the case of tobacco, other effective interventions include monitoring tobacco use and control policies, establishing smoke-free areas, providing cessation support, requiring health warnings on packaging, and enforcing bans on advertising, promotion, and sponsorship (WHO 2008). On alcohol, these include strengthened restrictions on alcohol availability, advanced and enforced drink driving countermeasures, facilitate access to screening, brief interventions, and treatment, and enforce bans or comprehensive restrictions on alcohol advertising, sponsorship, and promotion (WHO 2024a; WHO 2019). In SSBs and nutrition in general, including front-of-package labeling, marketing regulations, mass media and digital communication approaches, food fortification, and repurposing of public support for agrifood.
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“Maldonado, Norman; Ozer, Ceren; Veillard, Jeremy. 2025. Reforming Health Taxes to Improve Mexico’s Health. Health Taxes Knowledge Note; #8. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43736 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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