Sunday Times 2
Ban on loose cigarette sales may backfire
| S |
moking is harmful to your health, period. Even a 15-year-old boy knows this. So is alcohol, so is chewing betel. So is overeating, so is excessive intake of sugar, so is starch, one can even die of drinking too much water. There are so many things which are harmful to us and yet we continue to pursue these things. This is called human weakness. Some 300,000 people are engaged in the legal tobacco trade and there are an estimated 3.5 million smokers in Sri Lanka. Cannot the Government understand their plight and their feelings?
No government in the world has yet been able to make people “good” by legislation.
The recent proposal to prohibit the sale of cigarettes in singles and to force people to buy packets is one of those pieces of legislation in the same vein.
The sale of cigarettes in Sri Lanka is in singles or twos and threes. Rarely do people buy them in packets, given the lowest priced packet of cigarettes costs around Rs. 600.00. By making it harder and harder for the consumers to reach for a cigarette, smokers are shifting to “Beedis.” While cigarettes sales have undoubtedly fallen, the Beedi sales have increased phenomenally. This has not made consumers to cut down on cigarettes. Instead, a shift to other means has taken place. As is obvious, this means that health wise no improvement has taken place but a turn for the worse. The tobacco industry is doing much Research & Development to make smoking less harmful, while the Beedi industry has no quality controls whatsoever. The macabre graphics on each packet has not affected tobacco sales, as shown by findings all over the world.
Newspaper reports indicate that the recent hike in cigarettes prices has increased the inflow of smugged cigarettes. One must bear in mind that only a minuscule number of these (one in ten) detections are made of the actual incidents of smuggling. I must also point out that the manufacture of counterfeit cigarettes has also increased proportionately. The Government’s moves are only making the situation worse by turning a legal trade into an illegal one. As is inevitable the Excise Duties will decrease, with smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes taking their place instead of the legal trade. People will always find the means to circumvent these unenforceable laws and courts will be engulfed by unnecessary cases.
The opportunity for corruption is also increased among the enforcers of these laws and over-zealous officials are bound to bring many small-time traders to court and further clog up the legal system. Organised crime will also rise as in the 1930s “Prohibition Era” in the United States and more recently in India. These are laws which will eventually end up like the “Poya day” weekend where we found our country sleeping while the rest of the world was awake.
The Government’s coffers are most replenished by the sale of alcohol and tobacco. As the sales of tobacco drop, the Government stands to lose by 50 to 70 billion rupees while, as was shown, no good has come to society at large.
More than all this, I want to enjoy my innocent pleasure without the Government telling me how many cigarettes I should buy at any given time.
We are walking into a trap where the underworld will take over the tobacco business and a Mafia of sorts will be created, like during the 1930s Prohibition Era in the United States or more recently in India. The Government now stands warned and governments have fallen on much smaller issues. I remember a time when the Ceylon Tobacco Company (the monopoly on manufacture and sale of tobacco products in Sri Lanka) went on strike, it ended with cigarettes having to be imported from India and break-ins and even murders took place due to the shortage thus created.
From a cigarette smoking society to a Beedi smoking one! Is this what the “Yahapalanaya” wants to create. There are far more insidious matters at stake, which may not be discussed now, but will certainly come to light if such laws are put into action.