I wonder if Ukrainian cigarettes are covered by the tax?
Posted on 06/05/2004 8:38:18 AM PDT by qam1
Russia, home to some of the world’s cheapest cigarettes and most committed smokers, is to risk the wrath of the tobacco industry and raise cigarette taxes by up to 30%.
The excise increase has already been approved in a first reading in the country’s Duma (lower house) and is expected to take effect on 1 January 2005.
For Russia the move is a radical step, but the traditionally smoker friendly country is starting from an extraordinarily low base.
Domestically produced unfiltered cigarettes, which are popular with many Russians on lower incomes, cost as little as 20 p ($0.35; €0.29) a pack, and an "expensive" pack of Marlboro Lights produced in Russia under licence costs just 60 p.
The reasons for such low prices are low production and labour costs and low tax rates.
Smoking is therefore rife; official figures show that half the country’s 145 million population smokes.
Among men aged 25 to 34 years the rate exceeds 70%, the highest level in the world, and many Russians start smoking at the age of 10 to 12.
Tobacco advertising faces few restrictions, and although smoking in public places is theoretically banned, the ban is hardly ever enforced.
The lack of tobacco control has contributed to the low life expectancy in males (58.6 years), and an estimated 300 000 people die from smoking related diseases every year.
The government says its priority is to wean people off unfiltered cigarettes, which contain extremely high levels of nicotine.
"Unfiltered cigarettes cost less than a ride in the metro," said the deputy finance minister, Mikhail Motorin. "We must stamp out unfiltered cigarettes through economic means."
He also said that Russia wanted to harmonise its excise rates with neighbouring countries: "Excise taxes on tobacco must be raised here because they are much lower than in Europe and in our neighbours Ukraine and Belarus."
The government also wants more tax revenue itself.
It is therefore raising the tax rate for unfiltered cigarettes by 30% and the rate for filtered cigarettes by 17%.
Although the tax increases are swingeing by Russian standards (the annual increase is usually pegged to inflation), the end result will only be a price hike of up to 1 p per packet. Just a quarter of the retail price will be made up of tax.
The tobacco industry is crying foul none the less. It says that many Russian factories are in danger of going under as a result and that big multinationals will benefit at their expense.
Alexei Mitrofanov, an MP from the nationalist Liberal Democratic party, argues that the move will "mainly hit the poor," who buy the cheaper unfiltered cigarettes.
"This increase is being pushed through in the interests of three major tobacco companies. All of this is [the result of] lobbying by American companies."
Only cowards smoke filtered cigarettes.
PING
And in releated News, It's been now found that smoking causes you to get Legionnaires' disease if you visit an Aquarium
I wonder if Ukrainian cigarettes are covered by the tax?
Marlboro is the brand of the serious programmer.
The legionnaire's link made me laugh so loud I spilled my coffee.
It NEVER ends,the constant search to link all deaths and diseases to smoking.
If they had stopped in the beginning with lung and heart disease they may have made a case,but now smoking is blamed for everything.
I'm sure if we wait long enough there will be a smoking/Al Qaeda link.It's only a matter of time.
The American tobacco companies could be behind this,as one gentleman says. I wouldn't put it past them.
Just more business for the Native Americans as far as I'm concerned,and good luck to them.
The various governments have made tax evasion a quite common pastime.
There's some truth to that. When I worked out doors, I worked with a man who smoked one cigarette after another. He'd throw one down, rub it out with his heel and then light another one.
He got cancer of the shoe and died.
My brother smoked. He died of cancer at 31. Must have gone to an aquarium.
My aunt smoked. She stopped and got lung cancer 5 years later. Apparently stopping causes cancer.
Good one!
Lung Cancer is serious illness and so is TB and cigarettes contribute or cause to both. This is not to tax on cigarettes to finance some program, like US sinning taxes, this is to cause flat out drop in smoking.
Raising the price won't cause smoking to drop,education and social preassure MAY do it,but if a smoker wants to smoke,he or she will smoke.
Raising the price causes the seeking of cheaper alternatives.
Rule of economics: what you do not want, tax it. Taxation lowers behavior...aka tax investments and get less investment.
Very well stated. That's it in a nutshell.
Taxing cheap, NON-filtered cigarettes while excusing the higher-costing filtered and imported ones sounds more like Bill Gates than Vladimir Vladimirovich.
Some deputat took major money to gore this ox.
BTW: What to smokes cost in your neck of the woods? Here are some of our Ukrainian prices:
Belomorkanal .39 /pack (7 cents)
Kozak brand .50 / pack (9 cents)
Prima (Russian imported) .65 (12 cents)
Tu-134 (Russian) 10 pack carton 7.50 ($1.40)
Rothman's (British) 47.70 / carton ($8.90)
Camel 24.00 / carton ($4.48)
Winston 21.90 / carton ($4.09)
Marlboro 30.90 / carton ($5.77)
Just wait and watch... there will be a HUGE jump in bootleg smokes. It's happened here, it'll happen in Russia.
This is what happens when governments try to tax things into oblivion... the black market rears its ugly head. Cause and effect, cause and effect... Pavlov would be proud.
TB is an infectious disease and is NOT caused, by any stretch of the imagination, by cigarettes. In fact cigarettes don't cause anything, smoking them may increase the risk of contracting some diseases, but cigarettes are inanimate objects. About the only thing a cigarette causes is instant hysteria in the anti-smokers.
Several years ago a friend of ours contracted TB and we all had to be tested. My husband tested positive.....subsequent testing showed that he had been exposed to TB some years earlier, but his own immune system had fought it off...........My husband is a smoker.
Of the entire group of us that had to be tested only one other person tested positive - the person who had it - and he is the only non-smoker of the group.
It has nothing to do with diet, genetics, lack of health care, or anything else. It's that darn lack of tobacco control.
I wonder how far back they go with the life expectancy charts. Do they count the various purges by dictators?
ick!
(My last pack of Camels was on Mother's Day ... =)
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