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Friday, March 29, 2024

Health buffs seek tobacco tax increase

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Using the hastags #DearAngara #HealthWarriors, health advocates on Sunday renewed their appeal to the public to help them convince legislators to include  tax hike on   tobacco  in the government’s Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion.

Angara in the hastag #DearAngara refers to Senator Sonny Angara, chairman of the Senate ways and means committee, which has been pushing for TRAIN to generate additional taxes for the government. 

New Vois Association of the Philippines president Emer Rojas, a cancer survivor and himself a victim of smoking, warned that the country will see a million more smokers in five years if tobacco tax is not increased.

“We’ve seen how the sin tax dramatically reduced the number of Filipino smokers from 17 million in 2009 to 15.9 million in 2015,”  Rojas, one of those who strongly campaigned for the amendment of the sin tax in 2012, he said. 

Rojas warned that without increasing tobacco tax the gains achieved through the sin tax law may reverse. 

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The sin tax was meant to increase funding for health and reduce the number of smokers by imposing higher taxes on tobacco products.

Around  150,000 Filipinos die every year or roughly 400 everyday from smoking,  estimates showed.

Health advocates want a unitary tobacco tax increase from P30 to P60 starting next year to continue the gains of the 2012 sin tax reform. 

Rojas, who used to be an engineer, businessman, and radio broadcaster, lost his vocal cords when he was diagnosed with stage 4 laryngeal cancer, a condition he developed through smoking.

Health advocates known to have lobbied and fought for stronger tobacco control have taken their fight to social media sharing their personal experience with smoking.

Dr. Antonio Dans, professor of cardiology and clinical epidemiology at the University of the Philippines, and one of the most active anti-smoking advocates in the country, shared how his family lost their father and sister to tobacco.

He shared that his father was a heavy smoker who died of lung cancer at an early age of 69. Two years prior to his death, the older Dans had suffered a stroke. 

“Smoking was not his fault,”Dans said arguing that smokers just like his dad was thrown into the habit because it was glamorized and because cigarettes in the Philippines, being one of the cheapest in the world, were highly accessible.

Dans said his sister, Dinky, was also snatched from their family because of smoking. Fourteen years ago Dr. Dans diagnosed his sister to have lung cancer. She was 53 and months later he saw her slowly breathe her last breath while in the arms of her husband and three children.

“Tobacco kidnapped my sister when she was a young teenager and tobacco eventually murdered her,” Dr Dans said in his Facebook post.

Dr. Maricar Limpin, executive director of the Framework Convention Tobacco Control Alliance Philippines, also shared how her family struggled through hard times when her father died in his 30s.

Limpin said she was only six or seven years old when her father, a chain smoker passed away.

    

 

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