Tax Jump Causes Cigarette Sales Slump: Thailand

[SICHONSTEVE]

'Raising the tobacco tax from Bt1 to Bt10 per kilo is a 10-fold hike, he said, adding that the new tax structure requires TTM to pay Bt1,000 for a kilo of blended tobacco'.

Oh so dramatic!!!! What this effectively means is that the tax has gone from 0.1% to 1% which should hardly break them - as far as I'm concerned it should be raised to 20% at least to discourage this disgusting habit!!!!.

[h90]

I would wager that there actually has been no reduction in the consumption of cigarettes, but instead, a considerable hike in the number of cigarettes being illegally imported across the borders.

I used to visit Cambodia regularly, and I was amazed at how cheap cigarettes, wine, beer, etc., were at the border checkpoints. No doubt some local entrepreneur is currently taking advantage of this to flood the Thai market and make a killing!

In companies it is common that if someone goes to Hat Yai, he or she get an order list, black label and ciggis. No doubt on the border to Cambodia it will be the same.

Yes but the quality of the Myanmar ciggs is crap!

I never heard from Myanmar....In Hat Yai things comes from Malaysia or from boats. But I guess as more expensive the real one get the ugly fake one get more acceptable. I know my grand grand father had tobacco in his garden in Austria. Maybe that is the future....

[Ricardo]

Tobacco was also grown in England at one point, hence the laws about not adulterating the tobacco with other old leaves, which is one reason why British-made cigarettes enjoy a reputation for better-quality, somewhat akin to the German beer-purity laws.

[Fozfromoz]

'Raising the tobacco tax from Bt1 to Bt10 per kilo is a 10-fold hike, he said, adding that the new tax structure requires TTM to pay Bt1,000 for a kilo of blended tobacco'.

Oh so dramatic!!!! What this effectively means is that the tax has gone from 0.1% to 1% which should hardly break them - as far as I'm concerned it should be raised to 20% at least to discourage this disgusting habit!!!!.

Oh so dramatic!

[Thai at Heart]

'Raising the tobacco tax from Bt1 to Bt10 per kilo is a 10-fold hike, he said, adding that the new tax structure requires TTM to pay Bt1,000 for a kilo of blended tobacco'.

Oh so dramatic!!!! What this effectively means is that the tax has gone from 0.1% to 1% which should hardly break them - as far as I'm concerned it should be raised to 20% at least to discourage this disgusting habit!!!!.

Oh so dramatic!

1000 baht per kilo represents 20 baht per pack approx. And yes all cigarettes are up accordingly.

[Thai at Heart]

Tobacco was also grown in England at one point, hence the laws about not adulterating the tobacco with other old leaves, which is one reason why British-made cigarettes enjoy a reputation for better-quality, somewhat akin to the German beeur-purity laws.

I don't think the law on crop year applies anymore.

[SICHONSTEVE]

Do better quality cigarettes kill you faster or more slowly, I wonder..

[Thai at Heart]

Do better quality cigarettes kill you faster or more slowly, I wonder..

Not too many people want to prove the relative safety of cigarettes. Companies would lose money, governments would lose money.

Lighter is safer is a stupid misnomer.

[SICHONSTEVE]

Do better quality cigarettes kill you faster or more slowly, I wonder..

Not too many people want to prove the relative safety of cigarettes. Companies would lose money, governments would lose money.

Lighter is safer is a stupid misnomer.

Of course it's a misnomer - just as they intend it to be to trick people into thinking they are slightly less dangerous.

Who would have thought that diet soda is just as bad and fattening as normal soda??

[Thai at Heart]

Do better quality cigarettes kill you faster or more slowly, I wonder..

Not too many people want to prove the relative safety of cigarettes. Companies would lose money, governments would lose money.

Lighter is safer is a stupid misnomer.

Of course it's a misnomer - just as they intend it to be to trick people into thinking they are slightly less dangerous.

Who would have thought that diet soda is just as bad and fattening as normal soda??

Ummmm, the lighter is safer hypothesis came from the US surgeon general.

[Thai at Heart]

Do better quality cigarettes kill you faster or more slowly, I wonder..

Not too many people want to prove the relative safety of cigarettes. Companies would lose money, governments would lose money.

Lighter is safer is a stupid misnomer.

Of course it's a misnomer - just as they intend it to be to trick people into thinking they are slightly less dangerous.

Who would have thought that diet soda is just as bad and fattening as normal soda??

Ummmm, the lighter is safer hypothesis came from the US surgeon general.

[SICHONSTEVE]

Do better quality cigarettes kill you faster or more slowly, I wonder..

Not too many people want to prove the relative safety of cigarettes. Companies would lose money, governments would lose money.

Lighter is safer is a stupid misnomer.

Of course it's a misnomer - just as they intend it to be to trick people into thinking they are slightly less dangerous.

Who would have thought that diet soda is just as bad and fattening as normal soda??

Ummmm, the lighter is safer hypothesis came from the US surgeon general.

Who is probably funded indirectly by the tobacco companies just the same as the pharma companies fund the studies that claim their drugs are safe - the whole thing is a big con to increase their profits!! The FDA is infiltrated by lobbyists for big pharma to get their drugs approved and keep natural remedies (which are far safer and normally better, by the way) out!!

[nisakiman]

Who is probably funded indirectly by the tobacco companies just the same as the pharma companies fund the studies that claim their drugs are safe - the whole thing is a big con to increase their profits!! The FDA is infiltrated by lobbyists for big pharma to get their drugs approved and keep natural remedies (which are far safer and normally better, by the way) out!!

No, the US Surgeon General is funded indirectly by the pharmaceutical companies, as are the vast majority of anti-tobacco charities and lobbying groups (well, they are registered as charities, but only a fraction of their income is derived from public donation. The vast bulk of their money comes from government and Big Pharma).

In the USA the Robert Johnson Foundation (an offshoot and major shareholder of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical empire) alone between 1993 and 2007 donated $446,000,000 to anti-tobacco lobbying groups, with a view to maximising worldwide sales of their Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) patches and gums - now a multi-billion dollar industry. http://tctactics.org/index.php/Pharma

Three of the largest pharmaceutical companies, "Glaxo Wellcome, Novartis Consumer Health and Pharmacia & Upjohn, all manufacturers of treatment products for tobacco dependence" are now funding the World Health Organisation (WHO) and supporting the FCTC (Framework Convention on Tobacco Control), http://www.who.int/inf-pr-1999/en/pr99-04.html - an international pogrom to make life difficult for smokers, and thus drive up sales of NRT; (Which, by the way, has a success rate as low as 0.8%.)

The nicotine addiction fallacy, rather than helping science progress, creates barriers to further scientific research on tobacco. In Professor Robert Molimard's words:

(...) having arbitrarily decided that nicotine alone explains tobacco dependence and having it engrained in the minds of doctors, the authorities and the public, any research on the other possible factors of this dependency is now excluded in advance and a vast new market is made available for commercial exploitation by the pharmaceutical industry

The concept of "second-hand smoke" is a construct of the Tobacco Control Industry, and all the "proof" of the danger is down to cherry-picked statistics and junk science. The "millions" who are killed by SHS are just virtual, hypothetical numbers, dreamed up by a fanatical anti-smoking lobby. There are no actual dead bodies. For all these "millions" dying worldwide, there exists NOT ONE death certificate showing SHS as the cause of death. Nor one pathologists report suggesting that exposure to SHS was the cause of death.

As Herr Joseph Goebbels said:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”