Message to Chancellor from region on tobacco
Mar 12 2008 by Audrey Barton, The Journal
SMOKE-FREE campaigners are calling on Chancellor Alistair Darling to raise tobacco taxes in today’s Budget to protect the health of the region.
Fresh-Smoke Free North East is calling on the Treasury to maintain low VAT on nicotine replacement therapies and raise tobacco taxes to bring down smoking rates today, No Smoking Day.
Fresh is asking the Chancellor to maintain the 5% VAT on nicotine replacement therapies that was introduced in last year’s Budget which was reduced from 17.5% as an incentive to increase uptake.
Campaigners also want the Government to re-introduce the real-price escalator to raise the tax on tobacco by at least 10p per pack above the rate of inflation and to implement a revised anti-smuggling strategy with challenging new targets.
And Fresh wants the Government to sign up to agreements reached between other EU countries and two of the world’s leading tobacco companies which put the responsibility for reducing smuggling on the tobacco companies themselves.
Ailsa Rutter, director of Fresh, said yesterday: “Increases in taxation on cigarettes and tobacco are a powerful public health measure. Fresh supports measures that help smokers to decide to quit and which lessen the dreadful impact of tobacco on the health of the North East. We know that when tobacco tax rises, the increasing cost of a packet of cigarettes is a huge motivator for people to quit smoking or to smoke less.
“It is also an important way of discouraging young people from starting to smoke in the first place.”
Smoking is still the number one cause of premature death and disease in the region, and the greatest contributor to the difference in life expectancy between the region’s most and least affluent residents.
It kills between 5,000 and 6,000 North Easterners every year, and the use of nicotine replacement therapies such as gum, patches, inhalators and tablets are vital in enabling smokers to quit.
Today’s national No Smoking Day will see a record number of smokers in the North East sign up for The Great No Smoking Day Challenge by quitting for at least a week, and Fresh is therefore making their recommendations to benefit the 70% of smokers who want to quit.
As the UK is the only EU country not to have signed the new anti-smuggling agreements, Fresh is asking the Treasury to sign up without further delay.
The recent North of England Summit on Smuggled and Counterfeit Tobacco, held in Newcastle in December, highlighted the scale of the problem which cheap illicit tobacco is causing, particularly in the region’s poorest communities, which suffer from the most ill health.
“The proliferation of cheap and unregulated tobacco products in the region is undermining the positive work undertaken to address the appalling health burden from tobacco,” said Ms Rutter.
“These products are keeping smokers hooked for longer to their lethal contents and making them very attractive to children to experiment with smoking.”
To quit smoking, call Free NHS Smoking Helpline: 0800 169 0 169 seven days a week, 7am to 11pm.
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