Rise In Smoking In Israel ‘Unheard Of In The Developed World’
Under Fire: An Israeli soldier smokes a cigarette as he waits for orders to enter southern Lebanon during the war against Hezbollah in 2006
TEL AVIV (JTA) — In its annual report on smoking released last week, Israel’s Health Ministry recorded the biggest single-year rise in smoking in more than a decade, with the rate rising to 22.5 percent in 2016 from 19.7 percent the previous year.
“This is unheard of in the developed world,” Leah Rosen, who heads Tel Aviv University’s Health Promotion Department, told JTA.
Health Minister Yaakov Litzman has recently come under fire for hindering some efforts to curb cigarette advertisements and for opposing regulations that would require manufacturers to put warning images on cigarette packages, saying, “it’s not aesthetic.”
One of the most impactful policy changes, Rosen said, would be to close a loophole in the taxation of cigarettes — which allows for loose tobacco to be taxed at a rate lower than pre-rolled cigarettes.
A study Rosen spearheaded in January found that by the time they were discharged from the army, 40 percent of men and 32 percent of women smoked — a 42 percent increase over the course of service. The good news, Rosen added, is that as one of Israel’s most powerful institutions, the army is in a position to get Israel back on the wagon.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
