Ex-health chiefs urge Senate to pass ‘sin tax’ bill

Saying that 240 Filipinos die every day due to smoking, Health Secretary Enrique Ona and two of his predecessors on Saturday urged the Senate to pass a proposed law increasing “sin taxes” on cigarettes.

Ona, together with former Health Secretaries Esperanza Cabral and Alberto Romuladez, urge the senators to “consider the dire public health risks” if the sin tax reforms are not legislated in 2012.

“It is imperative that a sin tax bill that contains the essential reforms of high taxes, simplified tax structure, indexation of tax rates to inflation and removal of the price classification freeze is signed into law,” Cabral said.

“These reforms are an absolute must for curbing a widespread smoking epidemic, the main reason for which is our country’s having one of the lowest cigarettes taxes in Asia,” she said.

According to the Philippines’ latest Global Adult Tobacco Survey back in 2009, 17.3 million Filipinos were tobacco smokers, translating to 240 daily deaths from smoking-related diseases.

As the average Filipino family comprises five household members, as many as 1,200 people stand to lose a loved one to smoking, on average, every single day.

Based on estimates of policy think-tank Action for Economic Reforms, a staggering 43.25 million lives would eventually be affected by the current tobacco-induced health crisis. If left unchecked, these numbers could escalate even further.

“As a former secretary of health, I have seen the poor and the young waste their health and resources on cigarettes,” Cabral said.

“This not only affects them, but also their families and our country. We know that the numbers have alarmingly soared over the past decade. This is a historic opportunity for change,” she added.

Romualdez said the health of the Filipino public “must be among the top priorities of the upper house legislators.”

“The high taxation on cigarettes will subsequently increase revenues earmarked for health and discourage vulnerable sectors such as the youth and the poor from picking up or continuing the habit.”

“Addiction to smoking usually occurs when an individual starts the habit at a young age, making the negative health effects eventually more damaging for them,” Romualdez said.

“This habit also forces the poor to spend enormous sums far beyond their meager incomes for their treatment and rehabilitation. We simply cannot let this devastation continue,” he said.

Statistics from the GATS survey also showed that tobacco use was most prevalent among men and women from the poorest quintile, and highest among those with elementary or no formal education.

More distressingly, over 53.9 percent of daily smokers initiated daily smoking before the age of 18.