Every year Pakistanis spend close to two billion dollars on smoking.
KARACHI: This is with reference to a report in your newspaper which said that in 2011 alone, Pakistanis spent approximately Rs200 billion on cigarettes. This is a massive amount and means that every year Pakistanis spend close to two billion dollars on smoking. This also goes to show that if Pakistanis were to give up smoking, they wouldn’t have to be so dependent on foreign aid handouts.
Since the production of cigarettes is not going to be tampered with by the government, the very least that the latter can do is to increase taxes on cigarettes, since this would also be a relatively easy way of generating additional revenue.
Mubashir Mahmood
Published in The Express Tribune, January 9th, 2012.
