The Philippines should go after smugglers rather than raise taxes on cigarettes, Japan Tobacco said yesterday as the Duterte government prepared its second tranche of tax reforms, ABS-CBN News has reported.
The president of Japan Tobacco International Philippines, Manos Koukourakis, said he had seen for himself how sellers of smuggled cigarettes were “ubiquitous” at a Davao public market.
‘Instead of raising taxes and going after the very legit companies like JTI Philippines… why don’t we better go after the SMUGGLERS!!!’ Koukourakis reportedly said in a text message to ABS-CBN News.
‘It will be good for the government, far better for those … [who] choose to smoke and not against the legitimate industry.’
Japan Tobacco recently acquired the Filipino manufacturer of cheap cigarettes, Mighty Corp, which had settled a tax evasion case with the government for P25 billion.
The first tranche of tax reform that took effect on January 1 included higher duties on cigarettes, fuel, sugar-sweetened drinks and cars to offset a reduction in personal income tax rates and help fund the President’s P8 trillion infrastructure program.
Under a 2012 law that restructured levies on tobacco products and spirits, the current P30 tax per pack was to be increased annually by four percent from January 1, 2018.
The government will not submit its own proposal on tobacco excise taxes in respect of the second package of reforms, but will instead ‘support’ a bill filed by Senator Manny Pacquiao, according to a Department of Finance statement.
Pacquiao is seeking a unitary cigarette excise tax of P60 this year, and a mandatory nine percent annual increase.
Category: People
‘Go after the SMUGGLERS’
Japan inches toward ban
The Japanese government said yesterday that it planned to restrict tobacco smoking in indoor public places but that it would not impose a ban, according to a story in The Japan Times.
Under the plan drawn up by the health ministry, restrictions on the use of heat-not-burn products would be less stringent than those on combustible cigarettes.
Smoking would be banned in hospitals, schools, universities and government offices, and minors would be prohibited from entering smoking areas.
Smoking would be permitted in restaurants and bars only within special rooms set aside for the exclusive use of smokers. The serving of food or drink would not be allowed within these rooms.
However, discussions are taking place about whether some restaurants and bars might be exempted from the requirement to establish separate smoking areas.
The use of heat-not-burn products too will be restricted to specially-designated rooms within restaurants, though in this case it will be permissible for customers to eat and drink.
Currently, facility operators are required only to ‘make efforts’ to prevent passive smoking.
The ministry plans to submit its tobacco-control bill to the Diet in March, and implement the legislation in stages in advance of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The ministry originally planned to introduce a tougher ban, but was said by the Times to have backed down in the face of opposition from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and ‘industries’.
A senior ministry official was quoted as saying that it would be difficult to introduce restrictions that disregarded smokers. “We need to take a first step,” the official said.Graduated smoking fines
Tobacco smoking will be banned in public places in Armenia under a bill proposed by the Ministry of Health, according to a story in The Jam News, Yerevan.
However, it wasn’t clear whether or not the ban would spill over into private spheres as well. The story described fines for smoking in cars, as distinct from smoking in public transport vehicles, though it was possible these ‘cars’ referred to work vehicles.
The ban is part of a new anti-smoking strategy adopted by the government in August. The strategy is aimed at reducing ‘smoking rates by 30-40 percent’.
“Over 55 percent of adult men and three percent of women in Armenia are regular smokers,” said the Minister of Health, Levon Altunyan. “Therefore, we propose a ban on smoking in public places.
“There won’t be separate smoking areas in restaurants because the aim of this anti-smoking measure is to ensure that nobody smokes at all rather than just to prevent smoking in the presence of non-smokers.”
Nevertheless, special outdoor facilities will be made available for smoking.
Under the bill, smokers would be fined an amount based on the place where they were found smoking; so those found smoking in a car would face a fine of AMD50,000 (US$104), while those found smoking on public transport or in a taxi would be liable to a fine of AMD100,000 (US$208), and those found smoking in an elevator, café or office would face a fine of AMD250,000 (US$520).
Meanwhile, cigarette retailers who sell loose cigarettes will face a fine of AMD300,000 (USD 624), while those who sell cigarettes within 100-meters of schools would be liable to a fine of AMD500,000 (US$1,040).
Employers who fail to display a ‘no smoking’ sign in their workplaces will face a fine of AMD100,000, while those who fail to ban smoking will be liable to a fine of AMD500,000.Ban has a silver lining
Kenya’s ban on shisha has opened up further opportunities for sales of electronic cigarettes, according to a story in Citizen Digital.
Now more than ever, electronic cigarettes and vaping are being popularized in Kenya as netizens share their vaping videos on social media.
Speaking to Citizen Digital, a Kenyan vape retailer reportedly said that e-cigarettes had always been available locally, but that the banning of shisha had opened new opportunities. Retailers were importing more vapes as a preferable alternative for a hungry smoking market.
“The vapes are now on a higher demand because with it you can smoke anything you want, from soft drinks, beverages, tobacco, liquid shisha and even liquid marijuana; it is a safer option compared to smoking shisha from a pot,” said the retailer.No safe smoking level
There is no safe level of smoking, according to the findings of a BMJ study reported by Alex Therrien for BBC News.
The BMJ researchers reportedly found that smokers needed to quit cigarettes rather than cut back on them to lower significantly their risk of heart disease and stroke.
People who smoked even one cigarette a day were still about 50 percent more likely to develop heart disease and 30 percent more likely to have a stroke than were people who had never smoked.
There was therefore no safe level of smoking for such diseases, the researchers said.
Their analysis of 141 studies, published in the BMJ, indicates a 20-a-day habit would cause seven heart attacks or strokes in a group of 100 middle-aged people.
If the people in that group cut back to one cigarette a day the result would still be three heart attacks.
Therrien said, however, that ‘an expert’ had pointed out that people who cut down were more likely to stop.
Cardiovascular disease, not cancer, is said to be the greatest mortality risk for smoking, causing about 48 percent of smoking-related premature deaths.
While the percentage of adults in the UK who smoke has been falling, the proportion of people who smoke one to five cigarettes a day has been rising steadily.Grants-offer spurned
Seventeen public health schools in the US and Canada yesterday pledged to refuse research money from the New York-based Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW), according to a story by Collin Binkley for WHSV Online relayed by the TMA.
Presumably they have pledged not to apply for such grants.
FSFW was launched in September with a $1 billion grant from Philip Morris International.
The foundation has yet to issue any funding but it has received proposals that are currently under review.
“The idea of taking money that’s from the tobacco industry is just antithetical to everything we do,” said Karen Emmons, dean for academic affairs at Harvard’s public health school.
A letter signed by the 17 college deans said both the tobacco industry and PMI had a long history of funding research in ways meant purposely to confuse the public and advance their own interests.
The foundation has said it will pay for research that helps smokers quit, helps tobacco farmers find other livelihoods and develops reduced-risk alternatives to traditional cigarettes.
Derek Yach, chief of the FSFW and a former executive of the World Health Organization (pictured), said that the foundation was “fully insulated” from industry influence.Vaper group formed in Italy
A new consumer advocacy group has been launched in Italy to represent the country’s electronic-cigarette users, according to a story by Fergus Mason for vapingpost.com.
The Associazione Nazionale per i Vapers Uniti (ANPVU – National Association of United Vapers) says its primary objective is to promote harm reduction by example, through introducing smokers to the new generation of safer nicotine products.
Mason said that Italy already had several pro-vaping organisations, such as the Italian Federation of Electronic Cigarette Manufacturers (SVAPO) and the Association of Independent Retailers (Anide), but that up to now there hadn’t been a group focused on vapers.
While manufacturers and retailers shared an interest in keeping a range of vapor products available, their goals didn’t always coincide with those of vapers.
The launch of ANPVU therefore gave vapers a much-needed opportunity to influence the debate.
Italy is said to have some of the most hostile anti-vaping policies in the EU.
Mason’s story, which includes a list of the new association’s goals, is at: https://www.vapingpost.com/2018/01/22/anpvu-launches-to-give-italian-vapers-a-consumer-led-voice/.Taxing vapers
Indonesia has said that it will impose a 57 percent tax on non-tobacco alternatives to traditional tobacco cigarettes from the summer, according to a story in The Jakarta Post.
The announcement has sparked criticism that the government is siding with major tobacco companies at the expense of public health.
Electronic-cigarette cafés have been opening across Indonesia in recent years but the fear is that the new tax could strangle this nascent sector.
Rhomedal Aquino, spokesman for the Association of Indonesian Personal Vaporizers, was said to have told Agence France Presse that whereas his association agreed with using tax to control consumption, a 57 percent duty was too high. It would kill a growing industry.
“It will make us look like a killing machine when we’re not,” he said.
Meanwhile, Hasbullah Thabrany, a health expert and advisor to the National Commission on Tobacco Control, warned that while customs and excise law required that the government set taxes on such products, it was possible that the authorities were using the levy to take sides.
“I do believe that the policy sides with the [tobacco] industry,” he said.
The tobacco lobby in Indonesia is strong. The country’s trade minister Enggartiasto Lukita caused a backlash from anti-smoking groups in November when he suggested tobacco farmers would be hurt by the fledgling industry, and that those turning to e-cigarettes should smoke regular cigarettes instead.
“We should turn vapers into conventional cigarette smokers,” he said at the time.
Indonesia’s customs office said it hoped the tax hike would make e-cigarettes unaffordable for children, while the health ministry said it was not sold on the argument that vaping was safe. “E-cigarettes are just as dangerous and can be even more carcinogenic” than regular cigarettes, said senior ministry official Muhammad Subuh.
“We reject both conventional and electronic cigarettes — it’s better to quit smoking altogether,” he said. “There is no such thing as ‘less dangerous’ when it comes to smoking.”An unusual case
A court in China’s Henan Province on Tuesday overruled an appeal filed by the family of a smoker who died of a heart attack after an argument with a man who had asked him to stop smoking in a lift, according to a Xinhua Newswire story.
The Intermediate People’s Court of Zhengzhou found that the behavior of the defendant Yang Jun was lawful and was aimed at safeguarding the public interest.
The court overruled earlier findings, rejected the plaintiff’s compensation claim, and asked the plaintiff to pay litigation costs of more than 14,000 yuan (about US$2,180).
The family of the elderly smoker had claimed more than 400,000 yuan from Yang following the incident in May, alleging that the argument had played a role in triggering the heart attack.
In September, the People’s Court of Jinshui District ruled that Yang’s behavior had not led to the death of the smoker but ordered Yang to pay compensation of 15,000 yuan to the family.
The family appealed against the court’s decision to the Intermediate People’s Court of Zhengzhou City. The court heard the appeal in November but pronounced the final judgement on Tuesday.
The Xinhua Newswire story said the case had attracted nationwide attention with many people criticizing the initial ruling against Yang and welcoming the final judgement.
Although there is no national law on indoor smoking in China, a 2011 regulation banned smoking in indoor public spaces including lifts.
But as of 2016, 18 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, had imposed smoking bans.
“Everyone, smoker or non-smoker, has the right to ask smokers to stop smoking in public venues,” said Jiang Yuan, an officer with the Tobacco Control Office, which operates under the Chinese Center For Disease Control and Prevention.
“The final ruling is support for national tobacco control and for those who get up the courage to say no to second-hand smoke.”New approach suggested
Imperial Tobacco Canada has said it believes that Health Canada can achieve the goal of reducing Canada’s smoking rate to less than five percent ahead of the target date of 2035.
It could do this, it added, by embracing the principles of harm reduction: by allowing smokers to choose alternatives to cigarettes, such as vaping and tobacco-heating products.
Imperial yesterday issued a statement to mark National Non-Smoking Week.
‘Tobacco Heating Products (THPs) and vaping products are battery-powered devices that do not use combustion to deliver nicotine, with the consumer instead inhaling vapor, not smoke,’ the statement said. ‘The vast majority of toxicants in cigarette emissions are the product of combustion, and with no combustion, the result is far fewer toxicants.
‘A report by the UK Royal College of Physicians states that because “most of the harm caused by smoking arises not from nicotine but from other components of tobacco smoke, the health and life expectancy of today’s smokers could be radically improved by encouraging as many as possible to switch to a smoke-free source of nicotine”.’
“In order to provide smokers with options between cigarettes and other alternatives – with no combustion and therefore potentially less risk – it is essential that Canada introduces regulations that can communicate their harm reduction potential,” Eric Gagnon, head of corporate and regulatory affairs, was quoted as saying. “With a reasonable and sustainable regulatory framework that supports harm reduction and next generation products, the federal government can reduce the public health impact of tobacco.”
Imperial said that the sale of nicotine-containing vaping products was currently illegal in Canada unless they had been approved by Health Canada. And since none of the products currently on the Canadian market had been approved, they were all illicit.
‘Bill S-5, which is currently before the House of Commons, seeks to legalize and introduce a regulatory framework for vaping products,’ Imperial said in its statement. ‘The Bill’s resulting regulations will have a significant impact on smokers who may choose to migrate from traditional cigarettes to smoke-free products.
‘Some governments, including that of the UK, have already taken a pragmatic approach to some of these new products and are actively providing smokers with proper information.’
“As part of the world’s largest and most international tobacco and nicotine company, we understand the complex needs of smokers, and this is why our company has invested more than US$2.5 billion since 2012 to develop a range of next generation products (NGPs) such as vapor and tobacco heating products,” said Gagnon. “It is crucial that the federal government changes its current approach toward NGPs to allow adult smokers to choose potentially less harmful products if they wish.”
Imperial said that the expiry of the Federal Tobacco Control Strategy in March 2018 would present an additional opportunity for the federal government to recognize how embracing harm-reduction principles could achieve its five percent goal, rather than adding more radical and ineffective control measures on tobacco products that only served to fuel the further growth of illicit tobacco.
“To lower the smoking rate, Canada should focus its efforts on building consumer awareness of less-risky alternatives to smoking, and crack down on the illegal tobacco industry that continues to grow and supplies more than 20 percent of the market with unregulated and untaxed cigarettes,” said Gagnon.
