Taxing tobacco products boost to the fight against d***s
Simon Mwangi
The government through its tax proposals to Parliament has recommended to tax tobacco-related products with a view to raise more revenues and enhance tobacco cessation activities.
This is a welcome move considering there are mind-boggling statistics on the devastating effects tobacco continues to have on its users.
Most importantly, this move aims at reducing the uptake of novel tobacco products that have revolutionised tobacco use and abuse especially among the youth, locally and internationally.
Truth be told, the tobacco industry continues to experience exponential innovation in a bid to keep up with dynamic market demands.
In addition, the industry is reinventing itself so as to grow their profits as the multi-billion-shilling companies supporting the sector seek to remain afloat and continue making money.
Tobacco use is a leading global disease risk factor and underlying cause of ill health, preventable death, and disability.
It is estimated to kill more than seven million people each year across the globe, accounting for more deaths than HIV/Aids, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.
If current trends persist, tobacco will kill more than eight million people worldwide annually by 2030, with 80 per cent of these premature deaths taking place in the developing world.
Regulating tobacco use using excise taxation, restrictions on smoking in public places, and restrictions on youth access and sale of tobacco products is now a widely-accepted policy action to prevent its harmful health effects.
Locally, there are quite a number of legislative framework which has been put in place to regulate access and tobacco use especially in public areas.
Kenya is a signatory to the WHO’s Framework Convention of Tobacco Control (FCTC). Article 13 of the Convention clearly talks about banning all forms of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.
According to the Tobacco Act of 2007, tobacco companies are required to set aside two per cent of their revenue to go into the Tobacco Fund to assist people suffering from the health effects associated with smoking.
The government issued a directive in mid-February this year requiring the tobacco industry to register all nicotine products as tobacco products.
This was mainly necessitated by the entry of a new, smokeless tobacco product whose contents could not be immediately verified.
The proponents of the product presented it as an easy tobacco-quitting medical alternative while those in prevention argued that it contained more potent form of nicotine than what is contained in cigarettes.
In recent years, policy deliberations at the global level on whether e-cigarettes and other smoke-free nicotine delivery systems should be classified as tobacco products, and therefore be regulated in the same way as cigarettes, have acquired great significance.
While the e-cigarette, a battery-powered device that heats a liquid containing nicotine into a vapor that is inhaled like a cigarette, is being touted as a harm reduction technological innovation to protect smokers from the ill effects of cigarettes, which continue to be marketed globally, we must ask: Is there strong scientific evidence that justifies this claim and exempts e-cigarettes from being regulated as another tobacco product?
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) Technical Manual on Tobacco Tax Policy and Administration, excise tax increases should aim to reduce the affordability of tobacco products.
The base on which the tax is applied is also important. For specific taxation, the tax base should be the quantity in clearly defined units.
For mixed taxation, the best practice is to use the retail price as the tax base and introduce a minimum excise tax.
In principle, administering tobacco taxes on tobacco products other than cigarettes is similar to administering them on cigarettes.
However, there is a lack of standardisation of other products and sometimes large informal markets. — Writer is Manager Corporate Communications, Nacada
