A GROUP of cancer survivors called for continued vigilance to protect the gains of the “sin” tax law, as the measure, considered as one of the country’s landmark legislations on tobacco control, is set for review in 2016.
New Vois Association of the Philippines (Nvap) said Section 11 of Republic Act 10351 mandates the Congressional Oversight Committee to review the impact of the sin-tax law four years after its implementation.
“During the sin-tax deliberations in 2012, the tobacco industry has made exaggerated claims of rampant smuggling, failure to curb smoking targets, and massive loss of tobacco farmers’ jobs if Congress passed this law. None of those happened. Instead, we saw the health budget improving, smokers started quitting and health-care services getting better because of increased funding from the sin tax,” Nvap President Emer Rojas said.
Rojas said these gains from the sin-tax law should be continuously protected in light of the 2016 review, because the tobacco industry may again try to undermine current achievements from the measure in a bid to pursue its business interests.
Data gathered by the Bureau of Internal Revenue show that collections from higher taxes in tobacco and liquor in 2013, or the first full year of the law’s implementation, reached P51.2 billion.
Money collected from the tobacco levy also boosted the Department of Health’s (DOH) annual budget to P90.5 billion, or three times its budget in 2010. As a result, more than 1.5 million poor Filipinos, or 300,000 indigent families, are now holders of Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) cards.
A recent DOH survey noted that higher taxes imposed on cigarettes has led to a reduction in the number of poor adult smokers, from 38 percent to 24 percent in 2013. Meanwhile, the population of young smokers aged 18 to 24 was halved a year after the law’s passage.
“While we acknowledge that some smokers have just shifted to cheaper brands of cigarettes, this is not due to a failure of the sin-tax law to reduce consumption but more so because of the two-tier tobacco tax system,” Rojas said.
The global health treaty Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) recommends the implementation of higher taxes and graphic health warnings as two of the most effective ways of curbing the tobacco epidemic.
“The adoption of strong guidelines on tobacco taxation is a public-health victory, as it is one of the most effective measures to reduce tobacco consumption. We are very excited about this development because implementing higher tobacco taxes means saving more lives,” said lawyer Irene Reyes, executive director of Heath Justice.
The government has recently passed the graphic health warning law in July, imposing the placement of pictorial warnings covering 50 percent of the bottom of cigarette labels. The law’s passage is expected to strengthen the country’s tobacco-control system and address the country’s high smoking rates and deaths related to cigarette use.
It is estimated that more than 17 million Filipino adults smoke, with 10 tobacco users dying every day, or close to 90,000 every year, from smoking-related diseases.
The Philippines is a signatory to the FCTC, which held its sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP6) in Moscow from October 13 to 18.
Last week the delegates, representing nations covering 90 percent of the world population, adopted powerful guidelines on tobacco taxation. At the same time, the parties rejected the Interpol’s application to observe the treaty because of its alleged ties to the tobacco industry and ejected representatives from tobacco firms that requested to watch the proceedings at the health summit.