Tax and tobacco – pre-Budget poll

Thanks to Gary Lineker (whose name I shall never mention again), this week's Budget has been overlooked somewhat.

The Chancellor's statement on Wednesday will have implications for all of us, but the impact on smokers will be huge if Jeremy Hunt maintains the annual tobacco escalator of inflation plus 2% (using the Retail Price Index as the measure of inflation) because that could mean a hike of 15%.

In terms of price, a pack of cigarettes could rise by £1.15, with the smallest (30g) pouch of rolling tobacco going up by £2. Even ASH baulked at that, suggesting recently that the increase in tobacco duty should be based on the predicted rise in average weekly earnings, which is currently lower than inflation.

Forest's response was to commission a poll to gauge public opinion. Conducted by Yonder Consulting (formerly Populus), we found that almost two thirds of the 2,013 respondents (65%) believe the tax on tobacco is already "about right" (38%) or "too high" (27%).

Only one in five (20%) of those asked think the tax on tobacco is “too low”, while 15% said they "don't know".

The poll also found that 62% of adults think that purchasing tobacco from the black market is an "understandable" response given the high cost of tobacco sold legally in the United Kingdom, whereas only 22% of respondents believe it is not an "understandable" response. (16% said they "don't know".)

Respondents also believe that the government has more pressing concerns than tackling smoking.

Asked to consider a list of ten issues for the government to address in 2023, respondents said tackling the rising cost of household utilities such as electricity and gas is the most important priority (54%), followed by improving the health service by providing more beds, frontline staff and cutting waiting lists (48%), tackling inflation (40%), and addressing care for the elderly (32%).

Other issues included tackling climate change (28%), the housing shortage (26%), and helping businesses recover from the impact of the pandemic (17%).

Tackling smoking was bottom of the list (10%), alongside tackling obesity (10%), and tackling misuse of alcohol (9%).

Armed with these results we said:

"The Chancellor should freeze duty on tobacco and give smokers a break. Raising the tax on tobacco not only discriminates against poorer smokers, it will drive more consumers to the unregulated black market.

"This is bad news for legitimate retailers and bad news for the Treasury which could lose billions of pounds in revenue if more consumers buy their tobacco from illicit traders.

"Significantly, there is very little stigma attached to buying tobacco on the black market. In a cost of living crisis the public understands that many consumers will opt for the cheaper option, even if it's illegal."

Naturally the poll was ignored by the mainstream media when it was issued last week. It was however picked up by a handful of trade publications:

Forest urges freeze on UK tobacco duty (Tobacco Reporter)
Budget: freeze duty on tobacco and “give smokers a break”, say campaigners (Asian Trader)
Almost two thirds of adults think buying illegal tobacco is “understandable” (Convenience Store)

I can't believe that any Chancellor would be stupid or heartless enough to raise tobacco duty by 15 per cent in a single strike, but during a cost of living crisis it would be especially cruel.

Nevertheless we live in strange times and as I have noted before (Why the Chancellor must resist temptation to hike tax on tobacco), Jeremy Hunt, a former health secretary, has form when it comes to smoking.

Watch this space.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

Of course smokerphobic Hunt will raise tobacco tax as high as he can. His decisions are based on what the extremist minority of professional activists demand of him and he knows the only way to stop those pesky lower income plebs from smoking is to carry on pricing them out of the legitimate market.

After all, if they then buy from the black market then that helps towards the stigmatisation of smokers as Untermensch and makes their criminalisation easier to help push forward that ideological "smoke free" world and the acceptance that only one group of people in this country can be legitimately denied social equality.

Such hypocrites. They truly make me sick. One would think the Tories might want to keep all the votes they can instead of trying to be more socialist and anti consumer than Labour.

It is still true to say Lib/Lab/Con - you cannot stick a fag paper between them they are so much alike, and I think that is because democracy is dead, voting is pointless, and that's because only unelected professional activists who have infiltrated our civil service actually run the country now.

[Rose2]

Well, I'll still pay the tax

Three years of Covid 19 and I still haven't caught the vile thing Herba Regina has proved it's worth.

HK squashes SARS smoking 'cure'
Monday, April 21, 2003

"The Hong Kong newspaper reported that some people say there were few smokers amongst the cases reported in Guangdong, the province in southern China where the disease originated, which further fuelled the rumors.

The Post said many smokers in mainland China had upped their cigarette consumption in response to the rumors, with many others actually taking up the habit."
https://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/04/18/china.sars.smoking/

1 February 2005

Nitric Oxide Inhibits the Replication Cycle of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus

ABSTRACT
"Nitric oxide (NO) is an important signaling molecule between cells which has been shown to have an inhibitory effect on some virus infections. The purpose of this study was to examine whether NO inhibits the replication cycle of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS CoV) in vitro."

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which is associated with a novel coronavirus (CoV), was first identified during fall 2002 in Guangdong Province"
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.79.3.1966-1969.2005?permanently=true

It's not the nicotine at all it's the smoke.