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Alcohol and tobacco consumption are significant public health concerns and considered some of the riskiest behaviors among students. Despite strong indications of heavy consumption of these substances, certain sections of the student population remain unexplored regarding their consumption patterns and associated factors, including research scholars pursuing Doctor of Philosophy degrees. This study aims to explore the patterns and correlations of consumption of alcohol and tobacco among doctoral students in three Indian universities.

A cross-sectional study was conducted on a total of 530 scholars from three central universities, Aligarh Muslim University, Banaras Hindu University and Jawahar Lal Nehru University, and focused on two substances (alcohol and tobacco) frequently used by students in India. Bi-variate analysis and penalized logistic regressions were applied to analyse the prevalence and associated factors of alcohol, smoking and smokeless tobacco among doctoral students.

Tobacco consumption was observed to be the dominant form of substance use among doctoral students. Findings revealed that 34% of scholars smoked and 25% consumed smokeless tobacco daily and around 14% consumed alcohol at least once a week. Major significant correlates of substance consumption among scholars were found to be gender, religion, parental mortality, dissatisfaction with academic performance and stress about future career/employment. Significant variation in substance use patterns was observed among universities.

This study provides first-hand evidence on substance use patterns and the correlates among doctoral students in three Indian universities. Findings indicate the implementation of specific intervention programs for mental health and counselling for this section of students to prevent substance use addiction would be beneficial.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate how higher tax on tobacco would influence output and employment in Vietnam.

The authors used micro-simulation techniques proposed by Walbeeck (2010). Both national data (from Input–Output Table) and household data (Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey) were utilized.

The results showed that any increase in the excise tax for tobacco would have positive net impacts on both national output and employment. The tobacco industry would not be significantly affected due to its small contribution to national economy and employment. More importantly, money released from reduced tobacco consumption would be reallocated to other goods and services, and thus outputs and jobs in nontobacco sectors would increase.

The key limitation of this study was due to unavailability of updated data, especially Input–Output Table as well as household living standard survey.

This study concluded that government should increase tax on cigarette along with a well-planned roadmap to avoid unexpected consequences on income and employment of laborers in this sector.

This study replicated a popular approach in order to verify an important government policy (i.e. effect of tax on tobacco on output and employment) under Vietnamese context.

Taxing tobacco is one of the most effective means to reduce smoking but concerns about the impact on poor smokers are a barrier. New Zealand resumed increasing tobacco taxes in April 2010. The paper hypothesised smokers would attempt to stop smoking and/or adapt, changing their smoking behaviours in response to price increases. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors conducted a door knock survey of smokers and recent ex-smokers who were home when visited. Participants (n=428) were from socioeconomically deprived neighbourhoods of Auckland with large proportions of Māori and Pacific Island people.

Many smokers (66 per cent) attempted to quit an average of 3 times. More than 40 per cent stopped for at least 24 hours without intending to quit altogether, monthly or more. Consumption reduced among 40 per cent of participants, by an average 7.1 cigarettes daily. More than a fifth of participants switched to cheaper brands. Switching from factory made cigarettes to roll your own tobacco (6 per cent) or vice versa (5 per cent) was uncommon.

The method resulted in a low response rate. Tobacco tax is associated with reduced consumption and high levels of frequent quit attempts in socioeconomically deprived communities therefore our study supports tax increases as a means of reducing smoking.

This is the first paper to investigate the effect of large recent New Zealand tobacco tax increases on low-income smokers’ adaptive behaviours.

The South African government’s objectives relating to tobacco, primarily deterrence and revenue generation, have since the early 1970s not been maintained. The real value of tobacco taxes fell over the 20‐year period 1970 to 1990 and, as a result, consumption steadily increased. Since 1990, however, the government has, despite vociferous opposition from the industry, embarked on a stronger programme of tobacco control and has increased excise taxes in real terms. Uses a simulation model of the government’s non‐optimal tax policy to show that revenue could have increased by 2 per cent, had the government maintained the real value of excise duties. These findings suggest that, despite government moves in the right direction, there is still much room for a stronger tobacco taxation policy in South Africa that will enhance government revenue and contain consumption.

Tobacco has exercised the interest of the nation since Elizabethan times, and the inhalation of its smoke for pleasure has become very widespread. It was not until the mid‐twentieth century, however, that its effects upon health were suspected. It is now widely accepted that tobacco smoke is implicated in a range of dangerous diseases, although the tobacco industry sometimes argues that the link is not proven. The arguments about the conflicting needs of a large, world‐wide industry and the health and prosperity of individuals and society are complex, and often influenced by conflicting vested interests. Government's involvement in the issues is further complicated by its reliance upon large tobacco revenues. The link between advertising and increased smoking, either by existing or new smokers, is not proved by research, although there are strong indications that it exists. The behaviour of most parties involved, including the tobacco companies, indicates that they share the belief of a link. Voluntary controls upon tobacco advertising have had some effect, in that, for example, advertising in the U.K. is no longer overtly directed at children, but various anti‐smoking lobbies believe voluntary control to be ineffective. The present British government has toyed wth the possibility of statutory control, but faces stiff opposition from back‐benchers and within the cabinet; it is also probably philosophically opposed to such measures. More research is needed into the link between advertising and smoking behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to examine cigarette consumption behavior of younger cohorts in the urban and rural areas of Iran. The authors use Iran’s annual Household Income and Expenditures Surveys (HIES) database over 2007–2013 for the statistical analysis. In order to control for a large number of households with zero expenditure on cigarette consumption, the authors have used the double-hurdle modeling approach for counting the outcomes of interest. The authors have also limited the sample to cases in which the head of household is between the ages of 21 and 45 and all children are younger than 18.

In this study, the authors have conducted a multivariate econometric analysis to identify the impact of age and birth year cohort on the demand for cigarettes among Iranian households. The authors have used the HIES data for multiple years in the analysis. The ideal data set for the analysis is a panel data that include information on cigarette consumption of various age cohorts over a long period of time. Since no suitable panel data are available, the authors have constructed a multi-year cohort data by extracting cohort data from the annual HIES data set. Due to the unique properties of cigarette consumption, the authors have used the double-hurdle econometric model with appropriate diagnostics.

After controlling for price and demographic factors, which affect the demand for cigarettes, the authors find that the younger cohorts in rural areas, who smoke, tend to consume fewer cigarettes than the older ones; however, the opposite is true among urban households. The probability of being a non-smoker is larger for younger cohorts in both rural and urban areas. Among smokers, the authors observe an inverse U-shape relation between age and quantity of cigarettes consumed per day. The trend is positive up to age 45, but diminishes for older smokers because of health concerns.

In comparison to previous studies of tobacco consumption in Iran, the authors have used a more comprehensive household income and expenditure survey data set with a large number of observations. Furthermore, the authors have applied an econometric method (the double-hurdle model), which is suitable for the analysis of the determinants of demand for cigarettes when a subset of households report no cigarette consumption.

This paper details the recent Convention put forward by the World Health Organisation (WHO) advocating a ban on the sale of tobacco goods through tax and duty free channels. It examines the purpose behind the proposals before considering the response and reaction of the travel‐retail industry. The paper maintains that the impact of abolition upon the sector would be severe. A co‐ordinated lobbying campaign has therefore been mounted that has emphasised the economic impact of a ban. It is argued that this campaign has been successful and has influenced the drafting of the Convention. The implementation of the ban has been left to individual countries and therefore relies upon the political expediency of particular nation states.

The purpose of this viewpoint is to discuss and analyze three major governance tools that have been implemented in the United States to target tobacco smoking as a major public health concern.

The author highlights the negative consequences of smoking as a global and U.S public health concern and discusses three categories of governance tools implemented in the U.S. Additionally, emerging challenges in the U.S. and different sides of story in developing countries are underscored.

Although some success has been reached in controlling smoking-related mortalities and morbidities in the U.S. and most of the countries, long-term and sustainable improvement require active surveillance and constant implementation of evidence-based policies and programs.

This viewpoint discusses the governance tools that can be implemented to decrease smoking-related preventable mortalities and morbidities. Similar tools with some tuning can be used to target smoking in other nations. Additionally, these tools can be modified to target other public health-related wicked problems such as obesity, alcohol consumption, and traffic accidents.

This viewpoint highlights the magnitude of smoking as a major public health concern and underscores the necessity of using governance tools in targeting this issue. Additionally, it provides application examples from the United States implementable in other countries with some contextual justifications and tuning.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the externality that arises from environmental tobacco smoke damage is no ordinary externality. Apart from acting to the detriment of passive smokers, tobacco smoking also affects the survival probabilities of smokers. Incorporating this into its analysis, this paper evaluates the damage caused by smoking, the appropriate design of public health policies and tax policies targeted at reducing tobacco‐related externalities.

By mathematically characterising how smoking impacts smokers and non‐smokers differently, the paper determines smokers' and non‐smokers' lifetime utility, enabling one to evaluate the impact of both health interventions and tax policies.

The paper shows that treatment as well as research and development leading to life‐prolonging health outcomes for smokers are generally oversupplied. The tax recommendations, however, are far from straightforward. Indeed, although not universally the case, it may be optimal to subsidise tobacco usage. The paper also discusses the separating conditions necessary for cigarette taxation to fall or rise with time.

It follows from the paper that ignoring the effect that smoking has on smokers' own life expectancy may lead to erroneous theoretical results and misguided policy recommendations.

The paper seeks to rectify the omission that smoking is somewhat different from other externalities. It develops a model where smoking results in both self‐harm and harm to others, enabling one to demonstrate that there is more to the theoretical study of this externality than is currently acknowledged in the literature.