Anti-tobacco activists criticise govt for reducing cigarette prices

Stage protest outside National Press Club, demanding withdrawal of proposal to introduce a third tier

ISLAMABAD: Even as the government slapped a five per cent withholding tax on tobacco, tobacco control activists have criticised the government for ‘reducing ’ prices of cigarette to that of counterfeit brands in the new budget.

On the eve of no tobacco day, activists staged a protest in front of the National Press Club, demanding that the government retract the proposal of introducing a third tier in tobacco taxation whereby international tobacco companies can introduce their products at cheaper rates.

In the budget proposal unveiled by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, the federal excise duty (FED) on a pack of 20 cigarettes has been cut from Rs32.98 to Rs16 by introducing a third tier. There was almost no change in the FED on the upper slab.

In its recommendations sent to the finance ministry two weeks ago, the State Minister for Health Saira Afzal Tarar had asked for a hike in the FED for cigarettes falling in the lower slab from Rs32.98 to Rs44 per pack of 20 cigarettes.

“The people are still waiting for the government to fulfil its two-year-old commitment to implement 85 per cent enhanced graphical health warning (GHW) on cigarette packs,” said Khurram Hashmi, the national coordinator for the Coalition for Tobacco Control Pakistan (CTC-Pak).

“More than 555,000 children continue to use tobacco each day. Youth are considered as the future of a nation. It means our future is at stake,” Hashmi added.

The activists at the protest were critical of government’s retrogressive measure to endanger the lives of the people saying that these measures would damage Pakistan’s efforts to meet its targets under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG goal 3a, “Strengthen the implementation of FCTC in all countries”.

Pakistan is a signatory to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) which calls in its article 6 for “Price and Tax Measures to Reduce the Demand for Tobacco” by raising the FED by at least 75 per cent.

Nadeem Iqbal of The Network for Consumer Protection said that the government had taken the country five years back by moving from the two-tiered to the three-tiered system after it had been altered in 2013.

“Something is terribly wrong among the three federal ministries- finance, commerce and health. While first two support the tobacco industry for their own reasons, the health ministry, which is headed by the prime minister himself, has recommended a raise in tobacco taxes. A recommendation that is totally ignored by the finance ministry and FBR,” lamented Iqbal.

For World No Tobacco Day – observed each year on May 31 - the World Health Organization (WHO) has called on countries around the world to prioritise tobacco control and combat the tobacco epidemic in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

Tobacco use disproportionately harms some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. More than 80 per cent of the world’s smokers lives in low- and middle-income countries, where the impact of tobacco use are further exacerbated by a lack of access to health care. Tobacco use also creates an economic burden, costing countries a staggering $1 trillion dollars a year in healthcare costs and lost productivity.

According to the WHO, Pakistan ranks at 99 among 178 countries in the world for cigarette smoking with each adult smoking an average of 510.59 cigarettes a year. This is a far cry from the 4,124.53 cigarettes smoked by Chinese. People in Guinea smoke the least cigarettes at almost 14.96 cigarettes per adult per year.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2017.