Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2014-06-03
Beijing is hoping to persuade more smokers by increasing the national tobacco tax and will likely follow recommendations set by the World Health Organization, which says the excise tax on tobacco should be at least 70% of the retail price, reports the Chinese-language Beijing News.
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| Activists take part in an anti-smoking campaign in Chongqing, May 30. (File photo/CNS) |
Beijing is hoping to persuade more smokers by increasing the national tobacco tax and will likely follow recommendations set by the World Health Organization, which says the excise tax on tobacco should be at least 70% of the retail price, reports the Chinese-language Beijing News.
Cui Li,
deputy director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission,
confirmed the central government is indeed planning to introduce measures,
which will include increasing the tobacco tax, in an attempt to prevent the
nation's younger generation from becoming smokers.
Figures
from the commission showed that there are approximately 300 million smokers in
China, and approximately 740 million non-smokers are at risk from second-hand
smoke. Some 1.2 million to 1.4 million people die of smoking-related diseases
every year in the country.
Echoing
Cui, Yang Gonghuan, a professor at Peking Union Medical College, said
increasing the tobacco tax is the easiest and most efficient way to curb
tobacco consumption. While most Chinese smokers are not suffering from any
financial problems, increasing the tax will have an effect on getting them to
cut back on the habit, he said.
However, Li
Baojiang, director of the Tobacco Business Research Institute's Policy Research
Department, said that the policy will encourage more tobacco smuggling and
result in more counterfeit cigarette products that will be even more harmful to
smokers' health.
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