The prevalence of smoking among Vietnamese adults aged 15 years and over in 2015 was 22.5% (45.3% among men, 1.1% among women) (Results from GATS 2015). Tobacco use is one of the leading causes of disease and premature death in Vietnam. It is estimated that 40,000 to 75,000 people die because of smoking a year in Vietnam (Tobacco Free Kids 2016). It also caused heavy economic burden with an estimated health cost of US$ 1.2 billion in 2011, equivalent to 5.76% of the national healthcare budget (Pham Thi Hoang Anh et al. 2014).
Vietnam has been working on MPOWER policies, starting with signing the WHO FCTC in 2003 and ratified it in 2004. The Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harms Law was approved on June 18th 2012 and took effect on May 1st 2013 and the National Strategies on Preventing Harms from Tobacco until 2020 was signed by the Prime Minister in 2013. Both the tobacco control law and the accompanying national strategies offer policies in line with the MPOWER framework.
However, one of the most important policies is still very weak, mainly because of the heavy interference from the industry. Vietnam has had several tax reforms since 2006 but the current tax policy is still not very effective given small increases, wide gaps between increases and not yet applying best practices such as no specific tax component (World Bank Group Country Brief "Vietnam: Tobacco Legislation, Use, and Taxation" (2019)). In addition to that, Vietnam is under risk of the industry lobbying for new products (END/HTP) with recent meetings between tobacco company executives and high-level government officials reported in early 2019. Monitoring tobacco industry interference and acting to stop them, therefore, is not only important for on-going policies being implemented but also for safeguarding against new movements from the industry.
The overall purpose of the project is setting up a Tobacco control network will be able to expose and respond effectively and timely to interference by the tobacco industry, leading to reduced interference of tobacco industry on policy making process, especially the tax and novel products policies.
The project aims to: