The first national seminar on taxation, health and tobacco is being held in Dublin today, with campaigners calling for tobacco to be delinked from the consumer price index.
Economists, health professionals and politicians, including Minister for State at the Department of Taoiseach Tom Kitt, are meeting at the Conrad Hotel.
Ash Ireland is campaigning for the Government to follow other European countries and remove tobacco products from the basket of items which are used to measure the CPI.
Ash argues that if tobacco products can be removed from the CPI - as has been done in other EU countries - the Government will have greater flexibility to increase tobacco prices because related inflation increase will not be an issue.
Ash Ireland chairman Professor Luke Clancy said raising tax on tobacco would be easy to administer, easy to justify on public health grounds and would guarantee an increased tax take while reducing consumption.
"It is important for the Government to remove tobacco from CPI if they are serious about tobacco control and the denormalization of smoking," he said.
Prof Clancy said a 10 per cent increase in the price of tobacco would lead to a four per cent drop in the number of people smoking.
Mr Kitt said the Government was committed to reaching a point where adult smoking is no longer seen as "normal or appropriate" behaviour by children and teenagers. "I believe that this is a realisable objective that is now within sight," he added.
The conference heard that tobacco prices in France have tripled since a tobacco-free CPI was introduced in 1990. Smoking in France has dropped by 50 per cent between 1975 and 2005.
Trade unions argue that tobacco should remain as part of the CPI, as it is a consumer product purchased by about a quarter of all adults in Ireland.
Around 7,000 people die from the effects of tobacco each year in Ireland, with thousands more becoming ill because of tobacco-related diseases.
The event was organised by Ash Ireland in conjunction with The Irish Cancer Society, Irish Heart Foundation and the Research Institute for a Tobacco Free Society.