Turkish President Erdoğan announced new taxes on tobacco products on 30 May, criticising the tobacco industry for causing addiction among young people, reported Ahval.

Erdoğan’s speech coincided with the World Health Organization’s World No Tobacco Day. “We love our citizens who are smokers.” Erdoğan was quoted as saying, “We try to discourage them by increasing cigarette prices, but for some reason they don’t stop. But we’ll still load up on cigarette taxes.” He also stated that the tobacco industry uses propaganda and manipulation as sales methods, encouraging children and young people to smoke by using cartoon characters as advertising.
According to the report, Turkey recently employed a set of measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus, which included the closure of places where tobacco products were widely sold. During the lockdown, hookah lounges, cafés, entertainment centres, nightclubs and bars were closed.
According to data from Tobacco Atlas, in Turkey, around 14.5 million adults and 252,000 children use tobacco every day. However, Erdoğan has been leading a variety of anti-smoking campaigns and Turkey now has the highest level of tobacco taxes in the world, which reach up to 87 per cent, following a series of tax hikes since the beginning of 2019.