Hungary: Smoking Declining, Tax office Says

Source from:  The Budapest Times  12/05/2013

Cigarette sales in January-September were 76% down on the first nine months of last year, with 7,617.3 million cigarettes sold in free trade according to business daily Napi Gazdaság, citing the National Tax and Customs Administration of Hungary (NAV).

 The sale of cigarillos has tripled since 2011 and grew 30% in January-September this year compared with the first nine months of 2012. The sale of rolling tobacco also increased by nearly 30% between 2011 and 2012 and stayed mostly unchanged this year.

State secretary for health Miklós Szócska said the number of smokers in the country has fallen dramatically thanks to government measures taken to protect non-smokers in the past few years. A recent survey had shown that while 28% of the adult population used to smoke daily in 2012, this ratio dropped to 19% this year.

Government measures in recent years include a ban on smoking indoors in public buildings and their vicinities, and the controversial state monopoly on selling tobacco products to make it more difficult to buy them.

Critics say this latter measure gave retail concessions to people connected to the government, and the black market in tobacco products has increased. Enditem