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Impact of tobacco control policies on smoking prevalence and quit ratios in 27 European Union countries from 2006 to 2014
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  • Published on: 17 December 2018
    The Tobacco Control Scale: The Emperor’s new clothes?
    • alain braillon, senior consultant University hospital; 80000 Amiens. France

    NOT PEER REVIEWED

    Feliu et al’s conclusion “in the European Union countries with the higher scores in the Tobacco Control Scale, which indicates higher tobacco control efforts, have lower prevalence of smokers, higher quit ratios and higher relative decreases in their prevalence rates of smokers.” deserved comment.

    First, it seems a tautology. Tobacco control policies are robustly evidence based. Accordingly, more efforts, less smokers.

    Second, a PubMed search with “"tobacco control scale" only retrieved 27 articles since 2006 and no validation published yet. Obviously, the Scale poorly correlated with smoking rate: r2 being .58 in 2002/3, .15 in 2006/7 and .06 in 2010/11.(From table 3 in 2; n= 11 European countries).

    Third, why make simple stuff complex? This surrogate is complex to calculate and its items are subjective because issuing a decree is useless if no implementation were enforced. In contrast, the smoking rate and its evolution are simple and reliable! How France can be ranked 4th among 28 countries with a 57/100 score (1) while smoking prevalence has been plateauing for so long at more than 30%? In France, from 2004 to 2017 no relevant increase in tobacco taxes, no implementation of the legal smoking ban in cafés or of the ban of sale to minors despite sting operations by NGO showing evidence of serious breaches.(3)

    Fourth, claiming “the European Union should continue implementing comprehensive tobacco control pol...

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    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.