Australia is one of the most expensive countries in which to buy cigarettes, with retail prices set to reach nearly A$40 for a 30-piece pack after this year’s Budget, according to a Nova Network story quoting the federal Treasurer Scott Morrison.
September 1 is scheduled to see the imposition of the second of four planned, consecutive 12.5 percent tobacco excise increases.
The September increase will see the price of a 30-piece pack of cigarettes increase by about A$3. When the first of the increase was imposed last year, the price of a pack of 30 Winfield Blues rose from A$32.50 to A$35.20.
But it seems that high prices do little to convince smokers to quit.
According to the Nova Network story, Australia saw an 0.2 percent drop in smokers during a recent three-year period, which saw also cigarettes being sold in standardized packs.
Meanwhile, a Channel 7 News story had it that the number of people giving up smoking in Australia had slowed in recent years despite the country’s having the highest-priced cigarettes in the world.
England, the US, Canada, Norway and Iceland were said to be among a long list of western countries that were seeing their citizens kick the habit at a faster rate.
The Channel 7 story quoted Colin Mendelsohn, a tobacco treatment specialist and associate professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales, as saying that “high prices simply aren’t working anymore”.
Category: People
Tax rises not working
Call for 'sin tax' repeal
Excise taxes should be repealed in the US because they harm the poor disproportionately by requiring them to pay a higher portion of their incomes in taxes, say members of the Project 21 black leadership network.
In its Blueprint for a Better Deal for Black America, Project 21 calls for repealing both gasoline taxes and ‘sin taxes’ on items such as tobacco, non-tobacco nicotine products, alcohol, soda, and fatty foods.
This, it says, would reduce the burden on those who were economically at risk.
“With fuel prices on the rise, repealing taxes that can add up to 60 cents per gallon of gasoline would give much-needed relief for the poor who are hurt the most by rising prices,” said Project 21 member Rich Holt, a political consultant who also co-chairs the Ohio Center-Right Coalition meeting. “For the working poor who must drive to work, cutting fuel consumption simply isn’t an option. Each additional dollar spent on gasoline is a dollar that can’t be spent on food, medical care and other necessities.”
Project 21’s blueprint says that ‘sin taxes’ on items including fatty foods, sodas, alcohol, tobacco and non-tobacco nicotine products such as e-cigarettes are less about promoting public health than about generating government revenue. It cites a report by the UK’s Adam Smith Institute that found: ‘Sin taxes are blunt instruments which are more likely to deter moderate users than abusers’.
The Adam Smith Institute noted also that the bottom 10 percent of wage earners spent four times as much on taxes on cigarettes than did the top 10 percent; that the bottom 20 percent of wage earners spent nearly twice as much in alcohol taxes than did the top 20 percent; and that the bottom 20 percent spent seven times as much in taxes on fatty foods than did the top 20 percent.
“Federal and state excise taxes combined can add an average of $179 per year to a family’s gasoline bills,” said Project 21 co-chairman Stacy Washington, a nationally-syndicated talk radio host on the American Family Radio and Urban Family Talk networks. “While this might have little impact on wealthy and solidly middle-class drivers, it can have a devastating impact on those living near the poverty line.
“Add sin taxes on tobacco, alcohol and fatty foods and there is a heavy toll imposed on poor Americans, who are disproportionately minorities.
“Project 21 is calling for government to get off the backs of our poorest citizens by repealing these regressive taxes now.”Smoking spaces 'civilized'
China’s State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) said on Monday that indoor tobacco-smoking areas should be introduced in public buildings because enforcing total bans in all public places would be too difficult, according to a story by Christian Shepherd for Reuters.
Last month, the China National Tobacco Corporation (CNTC), which is regulated by the STMA, persuaded the eastern city of Hangzhou to amend proposed rules to ban indoor smoking in public places by allowing the introduction of designated areas for smokers.
The STMA, which shares offices and personnel with the CNTC, denied playing any role in the amendment of the tobacco-control measures.
‘We believe that as it is currently difficult to implement a total ban on public smoking, establishing independent smoking areas or indoor smoking rooms in public spaces allows civilized smoking,’ the STMA said in a faxed response to Reuters’ questions.
‘A mature and ideal society should respect every adult’s free choice to smoke or to quit smoking,’ it added.Flavors vote tomorrow
A proposed ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products in the city of San Francisco, US, has been portrayed as a fight between pro-ban David and anti-ban Goliath, but the allegory doesn’t work because David isn’t the good, little guy he’s made out to be.
In a piece for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Michelle Minton wrote on Friday that ‘big tobacco’ was pouring millions into a campaign to maintain its ability to keep selling harmful products that target children. ‘At least, that’s the narrative most news outlets have sold about Proposition E, a measure on the city’s June 5th ballot, which would ban the sale of flavors, including menthol, for tobacco products, including e-cigarettes,’ she added as clarification.
‘The David and Goliath story is compelling, but don’t be fooled. The other side, comprised of hundreds of anti-tobacco activists, is just – if not more – powerful than big tobacco companies. These groups have an advantage by cloaking their support of Prop E under the guise of “public health” and the support of factions in government and the university system, along with the industries that compete with e-cigarettes (e.g. big pharma). They also have vast financial resources, including taxpayer money, which they can spend without reporting it as “lobbying”.’
Minton goes on to describe the amounts and types of funding behind this lobbying and ‘non-lobbying’.
And she looks at the situation as it is currently, concluding, in part, that ‘kids, it seems, are neither targeted nor very interested in vaping, despite what anti-vaping activists claim’.
‘However, adult smokers increasingly rely on these devices as a safer means of consuming nicotine.
‘While likely not risk-free, recent analyses estimate that vaping has just one percent of the cancer risk that traditional combustible cigarettes carry.
‘And flavor seems to be an essential element in keeping people from returning to cigarettes. As a 2013 study found, the number of flavors a vaper used was independently associated with smoking cessation.’Estimating backwards
The smoking rate among women in South Korea is likely to be nearly triple the official figure of 6.4 percent, due to under-reporting, according to a story in The Korea Bizwire quoting a health expert.
In 2016, smoking rates in South Korea were ‘measured’ at 40.7 percent for men and 6.4 percent for women.
But Jeong Geum-ji of Yonsei University’s graduate school of public health said the difference in the incidence of lung cancer among men and women was narrower than that in respect of the smoking rate. In 2015, for example, 17,015 men and 7,252 women were newly diagnosed with lung cancer; so 2.4 times more men than women.
“If the smoking rate for men is 6.4 times higher than that for women, then it would be reasonable for the lung cancer incidence rate to also be 6.4 times higher,” Jeong was quoted as saying in a report submitted to a parliamentary forum. “However, the difference stopped at 2.4 times.”
The report said that, on the assumption that there were no genetic conditions at play in the occurrence of lung cancer, given the incidence rate, the smoking rate for women was probably more like 17.3 percent.E-cigs, not taxes, work
The imposition of higher excise taxes on tobacco products does not necessarily lower smoking rates, but substituting electronic cigarettes for traditional cigarettes does, according to a story in The Philippine Daily Inquirer quoting the representative of a pro-nicotine alliance.
Nancy Sutthoff, spokesperson for the International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organizations, was recently in the Philippines to address the first Summit on Harm Reduction, held at the Sulo Riviera Hotel in Quezon City.
Citing the case of her own country, New Zealand, Sutthoff said the government had increased tobacco excise by 10 percent every six months.
“Our smoking rate has yet to go down,” she said.
Sutthoff, who is also co-founder and co-director of the Aotearoa Vapers Community Advocacy (Avca) in New Zealand, said Avca had launched the Vape It Forward program in 2017 to support smokers who wanted to quit smoking by switching to vaping.
Eighteen months after its launch, the VIF program had delivered an 88-percent success rate.Americas doing well, badly
Tobacco use has declined markedly since 2000, both globally and in the Region of the Americas, but the reduction is insufficient to meet global targets aimed at protecting people from suffering and dying from cardiovascular and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs), according to a note posted on a website carrying the logos of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the World Health Organization.
The note said too that, currently, more than a third of countries in the Americas were not implementing a single tobacco control measure.
But later, the note indicated that despite this lack of action, the Region of the Americas was doing well in respect of tobacco control; at least judged on one measure.
‘On this World No Tobacco Day [May 31], WHO issued its Global Report on Prevalence of Tobacco Use (2000-2025),’ the note said.
‘Tobacco kills over seven million people each year, despite the steady reduction in tobacco use globally.
‘The report shows the pace of action in reducing tobacco demand and related death and disease is too slow and not keeping up with global and national commitments to control tobacco use.
‘The report also shows that the target of a 30 percent reduction in tobacco use by 2025 among people aged 15 and older is not on track to being met at the global level, with the current pace of decline indicating only a 22 percent reduction by that time.
‘The Region of the Americas is the only exception; the current projections indicate that the target will be reached by 2025.’Botswana is smoking
Botswana has a higher incidence of tobacco smoking than other highly-populated African countries such as Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, according to a Xinhua News Agency story quoting a senior official.
At an event marking World No Tobacco Day in Francistown, Botswana’s second largest city, the Permanent Secretary of Botswana’s Ministry of Health and Wellness, Ruth Maphorisa, said the incidence of tobacco use, at 17.6 percent, was ‘severe’.
It was the highest rate among all the African countries that were involved in the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) last year, which included Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda.
Maphorisa was quoted as saying that, according to last year’s GATS survey, 82.2 percent of tobacco users in Botswana bought single cigarettes, which made them affordable and easily accessible.
At the same time, the average per-person monthly expenditure on tobacco was estimated to be US$79.50, an amount that was almost twice the country’s minimum wage – US$40.00.
Finally, Maphorisa said second-hand smoke was more dangerous than was active smoking.Price decrease denied
Malaysia’s Health Ministry has decided to maintain the price of cigarettes following the abolishing of the goods and services tax (GST) today, June 1, according to a story in The Star quoting the Health Minister, Dr. Dzulkefly Ahmad.
“There will not be any decrease in price,” he said.
“That is our commitment to ensure that the prohibitive price is going to be one of the ways to prevent the use of cigarettes.”
Asked if other ministries had given their support to his ministry, Dzulkefly said he didn’t think this would be a problem. “We are almost on the same page on that one,” he said. “I can vouch on that.”
Currently, the prices of 20-piece packs of cigarettes range from RM12 to RM17, the Star reported. ‘With the zero-rated GST, the price of things will drop, including cigarettes, until the implementation of sales and services tax (SST),’ it said.
This was a huge window of opportunity for new smokers to pick up the habit, for current smokers to stock up, and for ex-smokers to fall off the wagon, a source familiar with the issue was quoted as saying.
To maintain the price of cigarettes, there was a need to increase excise tax, of which Malaysia was way below the minimum level recommended by the World Health Organization.High prices at slow sales
Flue-cured tobacco auctions that began in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh in early March have yet to gather pace, according to a story in the latest issue of the BBM Bommidala Group newsletter.
After 60 days of marketing 24.77 million kg of tobacco had been sold at an average price of Rs163 per kg.
The story indicated that by the same stage of last year’s auctions, double that quantity of tobacco had been sold, though there was no mention of what the average price had been.
However, a newsletter story from last year had it that after about 40 days of marketing, 21.57 million kg of tobacco had been sold for an average price of Rs145.53 a kg; so it would seem that prices this year are running about 12 percent above those of the previous year.
The increase in price has occurred possibly because this year 16 million kg of the tobacco sold so far is said to be bright leaf grades.
Despite the higher prices, growers are apparently worried at the slow pace of sales and are calling on the Chief Minister to hold a meeting with traders.
Growers’ concerns will have been heightened by the fact that the crop on offer is not a big one. The authorised crop size was 136 million kg, but the production estimate puts it at about 125 million kg.
