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Puffing and huffing: Raise the burden

By Ravi S. Narasimhan (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-06 07:46

Two lifestyle-altering events have greeted us lately: One is the smoking ban (partial) in the capital which went into force last month; the other is paying for plastic bags at groceries and eateries, effective nationwide this month.

In both cases, if the objective is a healthier nation and a cleaner environment, the moves seem half measures.

Take the smoking ban in Beijing, for example. As part of the promise to make the Olympics smoke-free, lighting up will not be allowed in most public buildings - and, of course, Games venues - but restaurants, bars and Internet cafes will have smoking areas.

This is good news for non-smokers who have had to put up with passive smoking - but does little to deter smokers who'll only be inconvenienced; and make up for it by puffing away extra given the opportunity.

Here are some grim figures:

China, the world's largest tobacco producing and consuming country, represents more than a third of the global total on both counts with only a fifth of the population.

According to the World Health Organization last year, the death toll from diseases associated with tobacco is about 1 million Chinese annually, and the figure is expected to rise to 2.2 million if the smoking rate remains unchanged.

And most worryingly, about 40 million of the country's 130 million children between 13 and 18 have tried smoking; and 15 million are addicted, the 2008 China Tobacco Control Report said last month.

The three top-selling cigarettes are priced at under 5 yuan and 90 percent of children have no problem in access despite a ban on sales to those under 18. The price of a hard-pack of Hongtashan (I declare my interest now: I smoke) has remained unchanged for the nearly four years I've lived in Beijing - at 8 yuan.

In other countries and regions I've lived in, the so-called sin taxes in the budget every year inevitably pushed up cigarette prices - and today cost about four times more for a similar brand in China.

Now, if we were to bring economic forces into play, here is a scenario: The central government tax revenue last year was about $700 billion at today's exchange rate, of which tobacco accounted for roughly 8 percent. If tobacco taxes were doubled - and taking into account price elasticity and reduced profits - the figure could be about $150 billion.

To put that into perspective, a 5 percent spending cut ordered for central government departments this year to fund quake relief and reconstruction, will yield about $10 billion.

From cash, let's move to plastic.

The banning of ultra-thin bags and the charging for other bags is a huge step toward reducing plastic usage in a country which uses 1 trillion bags, which consume 37 million barrels of crude oil a year to make them (the oil alone at latest prices costs around $4.6 billion), take hundreds of years to disintegrate, clog landfills and contaminate waterways.

Other plastic bags are charged 0.1-0.4 yuan. That's a significant amount of money to some, even many, but not a significant deterrent.

In the few days the rule has been in force, I've been to one major supermarket and a branch of a chain of stores catering to foreigners. I didn't see any significant reduction in usage of plastic bags - they only cost a little more.

The stores seem to have an additional checkout item right at the counter - a plastic bag for which you have to pay a little or a jute bag for which you have to pay much more.

Now, if the plastic bags were charged at 1-4 yuan, that could be a different story - we might end up carrying jute bags with us all the time.

E-mail: ravi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/06/2008 page8)