Budget blog - tobacco taxation
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 The Chancellor has announced that tobacco duty will rise by two per cent from 6.00pm tonight. It could have been worse. Nevertheless any increase in tobacco duty hurts those who can least afford it, especially the elderly, the low paid and the unemployed.
It won't stop people smoking but it does encourage smuggling and it could lead to a serious loss of revenue at a time when the country can least afford it. Is that what the country needs during a recession?
Update: David Cameron has criticised the two per cent increase in alcohol tax as an attack on the ordinary working man (or words to that effect). No mention (surprise, surprise) of the identical increase in tobacco taxation.
That apart, great speech by Cameron who left the Chancellor and the Prime Minister looking utterly redundant. Liked and agreed with his description of the Government as the "living dead".
Simon Clark
ASH welcomed the "above-inflation increase in tobacco tax" and said "The tax rise will help reduce smoking by encouraging current smokers to quit and dissuading young people from starting". ASH Scotland also welcomed the tax increase but expressed "disappointment" that the tax on hand-rolled tobacco had not been increased to match that of cigarettes. There's no pleasing some people.
Reader Comments (11)
I haven't had a chance to see or hear anything of the budget yet, as believe it or not, I am trying my best to earn my living. Nevertheless, the 2% increase is as you say Simon, not too bad on our pockets, but pretty damn mean on the elderly and the unemployed.
Regarding David Cameron not mentioning the tobacco tax increase, I have said this so many times that he would be absolutely mad to do anything else other than that. We have an election coming up soon, and he knows he would be torn to pieces if he were to defend smoking in any way. Drink is still accepted as the norm by most people, but smoking is unacceptable in any form. And it is no good moaning about this, and blaming the Conservatives, it is our fault, we allowed this law to take over our lives, and we sat on our behinds and did absolutely nothing about it.
We need to "normalise" smoking first, and when and if this is ever done, then we can start shouting at the politicians who refuse to help us.
Personally, I hope that smuggling increases 10 fold - let this government put that in their pipes and smoke it!
Hopefully, the majority of people will not get caught, either!
It's fairly obvious why there was a smaller increase in the tax on hand rolling tobacco. Buying UK hand rolling tobacco has already been completely denormalised. Congratulations ASH.
HRT costs about a third of the UK price in Belgium and about a quarter in Spain. Already many go to Belgium and Spain to but their tobacco and any further increase will only see more and more smokers spending their money abroad.
And did anyone see the reports about this miracle NRT which can, apparently, cause mouth cancer?
It was on the news this morning and also in the press, I belive the Times online had it as well as a few others.
Naturally it is being played down and the advice is not to take it for too long and if you taking it, to continue and speak to your GP if you are worried!
Needless to say, it was then stated that smoking is more likely to give you mouth cancer - if that is the case, then at least I am getting some pleasure from smoking whilst on route to this mouth cancer I apparently bound to get, much better than the big pharma's NRT.
One other thing in the report, Nicotine is the addictive substance, so that is another reason for not using NRT for too long! How do these people sleep at night? One minute NRT is not addictive, neither is nicotine and big pharma use nicotine in a vast number of medications and it is also, I understand, vitamin B3.
Sorry if I sound confused! All this contradictory information is enough to confuse anyone, though and it doesn't take much to confuse me at the best of times!
If medical correspondents and their sub editors were told that headlines that include the words 'could' 'may' or 'can' are banned, many journalists would (sadly) be out of work and many junk science projects would bite the dust. And without the pointless anxieties these stories cause, the country would be a healthier place.
This "study" about mouth cancer could be related to the e-cigarette. Since pharmaceutical companies still have other nicotine delivery systems, they can afford to go along with suspicion of mouth delivery systems, thereby neutralizing the very strong, competitive threat from the e-cigarette.
It entered my mind also that this may be the beginning of an attack on the e-cigarette
Me too, although I would still never use their disgusting NRT products!
I would far sooner take my chances and at least have some pleasure from doing so!
Hope you don't mind my putting this link here, Simon (it's a petition calling on GB to resign!):
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/#detail
+1