By Charina Clarisse Echaluce
An anti-smoking group composed of cancer survivors maintained that a unitary tax scheme on tobacco products is an essential strategy to promote public health, reduce cancer deaths, and at the same time generate the needed funds to address the impact of a tobacco epidemic; hitting the tobacco industry’s claims.
New Association of the Philippines (NVAP) President Emer Rojas said there is no truth to the claims of the tobacco industry on the alleged failure of the sin tax law to achieve its financial and health targets and address its impact on tobacco farmers.
“Claims that the sin tax was a failure in achieving its economic and health targets and that a unitary tax scheme would only favor big tobacco firms as they will be slapped with the same excise tax as with small manufacturers are baseless,” he stated.
The law, signed and implemented during the Aquino administration, imposed a four-tiered tax system on tobacco products starting 2013 that became unitary last January. This means that all tobacco products will now carry a P30 tax per pack.
Rojas said tobacco industry insists that the current two-tier tax system works to protect local farmers – as low-cost brands use locally-grown leaves instead of imported ingredients as in the case of premium brands – but it is actually “misleading,” noting that billions of pesos have been appropriated from sin tax revenues to assist farmers to shift to alternative crops.
To note, the latest results of the Tobacco Atlas covering the Association of Southeast Asian Region has revealed that 9,474 tobacco farmers in Ilocos Norte, La Union, and the Pangasinan region have shifted to non-tobacco products since 2013, which “require less input and labor but yield higher incomes.”
The industry said that a two-tier tax system will put more burden on rich smokers since bigger companies are slapped with higher taxes. Rojas, on the other hand, noted that the purpose of the sin tax law is to control tobacco consumption in all levels of users.
“Disease and death do not discriminate between rich and poor. The more poor smokers there are the higher the death and disease rates since the poor seldom goes to the doctor for preventive check-ups. They usually go to the hospital only when they are really sick,” he further stated.
The NVAP official stressed that contrary to the tobacco industry’s claims, the sin tax is pro-poor; saving the less fortunate from premature death and diseases caused by smoking which claims 240 lives each day in the Philippines. (Charina Clarisse L. Echaluce)