The Centre for Trade Policy and Development has called on Government through relevant agencies to conduct a review of the current tobacco taxation framework with the aim of increasing taxes applicable to tobacco and nicotine products.
CTPD Researcher Legal Chileshe Mange says as a signatory to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, Zambia has assented to implementing the guidelines without
reservation.
Ms Mange says these guidelines include developing harm reduction strategies to reduce access to and consumption of tobacco.
“In Zambia, the population highly at risk to Tobacco consumption is the youth, particularly adolescents. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and World Health Organisation
(WHO) have established that increasing the excise tax on tobacco products is an effective way of reducing tobacco consumption”, she said.
Ms Mange said this is evidenced by the reduced tobacco consumption among populations in countries such as Australia, Kenya and South Africa
that have systematically increased excise taxes on tobacco products.
She said the Australian government has raised taxes on tobacco by an incremental rate of12.5% annually from 2017-2020.
Ms Mange said currently, the average pack of cigarettes costs an equivalent of US$34.
She said the country is expected to raise approximately US$ 4.7 billion between 2017 and 2020 from tobacco taxes adding that the number of tobacco smokers and nicotine users has more than halved since 1995, when the government first implemented a more stringent tax regime.
Ms Mange said according to the UNDP, increased excise taxes on products such as tobacco can raise fiscal revenues, address market failures and replenish lost economic output from tobacco related death and disease as well as the externalization of avoidable health costs for society to treattobacco-related diseases.
She said governments therefore require sound tax policies and systems
that ensure that they achieve both fiscal and public health objectives in relation to tobacco.
Ms Mange added that the WHO also recommends that raising tobacco excise taxes to more than 70% of the retail price is among the most effective and cost-effective tobacco control interventions saying this is therefore the recommended global benchmark in relation to excise duties on tobacco and
tobacco products.
She said signatories to the WHO FCTC Zambia inclusive are therefore encouraged to take steps towards achieving this benchmark.
Ms Mange said the Tobacco Products and Nicotine Products Control Bill, 2018 (which is domestication of the WHO-FCTC) is scheduled to be tabled before Parliament in due course and CTPD
recommends that Government simultaneously review tax legislation in respect of tobacco products to ensure harmonization with the proposed legislation and the global recommended benchmark.
She said there is also need for policy and legal cohesion among the different sectors in order for tobacco control to be effective and has urged relevant Government agencies to work together and begin to table the appropriate tax legislation.
how is that our problem if the youth are smocking themselves to dearth .? Those who want to kill themselves you are welcome.
You too will die from some other diseases no one lives forever!
No problem. Very soon we are going to be smoking cheap weed.
Our notorious youths will simply switch to other substances, perhaps even more lethal. This Mange girl does not seem to know what she is talking about.
Tobacco is an Indian remedy.Tobacco was given to Columbus by Indians when he landed on the beaches of the Caribbean.This is recorded by Columbus in the ships log.It was smoked in a pipe called a “chillum” by Indian chiefs when ever a treaty was to be signed with the white man.It was to undermine Indian power and justice.That tobacco was made unpopular.Tobacco was introduced to the world.To the extent that it is now cultivated in nations near Isreal.Slaves were brought from Africa to cultivate tobacco in the new world and Barbados.Tobacco was how ever abandoned as a cash crop.In favor of the sugarcane probably because you could make more money out of sugar than tobacco.Columbus tried tobacco and recorded the numb feeling he experienced.Indian medicine men would also use tobacco smoke…
I agree with this wholeheartedly
Tobacco was unknown to Africa Asia and Australia.In ancient times.What was known in Asia.And probably traded by Arabs to Africa .Was opium and its derivatives.Which does not grow in the Americas.There is nothing African about Tobacco.Tobacco smoking is patently American Indian.Well to make a dollar Africa would cultivate tobacco centuries after Columbus and Millenia after the American Indians.Peter Carlos Hinds.
It is better to smoke cheap weed than the opioids grown and produced by India and China.Which also have a legal place in Western medicine.Peter Carlos Hinds.
You all niggers would tax tobacco.Why not tax Morphine which is an opium derivative.And used in western medicine.Or you all monkeys that do not know fire want to further under develop your pitiful economies.Peter Carlos Hinds.
You agree with that whole heartedly.The taxing or free trade in tobacco.It is said that a drowning man would catch at straws.Peter Carlos Hinds.