<strong>China: Group Calls for Tobacco Tax, Surcharge Hikes</strong>

Source from:  Focus Taiwan  09/17/2013

An anti-tobacco group on Monday backed a proposal for a NT$25 ($0.85) hike on packs of cigarettes as a step toward its goal to reduce smokers to less than 5 percent of the population by 2025.

The Taiwan Medical Alliance for the Control of Tobacco said that Taiwan's smoking rate currently stands at about 19 percent, a figure which is boosted by the relatively low price of cigarettes -- less than NT$70 per pack.

Wen Chi-pang, founder of the alliance and a researcher at National Health Research Institutes, said that a proposal from the Executive Yuan to add an NT$20 surcharge and NT$5 tax per pack could help in reaching the 2025 goal, which is based on suggestions by the World Health Organization.

The price hike could help some 500,000 to 600,000 people quit smoking, and it may prevent thousands of tabaco-related deaths each year, he said.

He urged the Legislature to allow the price hike to happen all at once rather than incrementally and to follow the examples set by other countries in the region to discourage smoking.

New Zealand has increased the price of tobacco every year, with plans for prices to reach the equivalent of NT$480 per pack by the year 2016 and an ultimate goal of making the country smoke-free by 2025, the alliance pointed out. Enditem