Sin tax bill at the Senate front

The fate of the sin tax bill is now in the hands of our senators. The House version (House Bill 5727) was already passed by the House of Representatives before adjoining sine die three months ago. More than 200 congressmen supported it with only 21 voting against it and five abstaining.

With the overwhelming support of the House and with no less than President Aquino pushing for its immediate passage, many thought that it would be a breeze getting the approval of the Senate. It may not be so considering the strong lobbying made by the tobacco and alcohol industry. This is quite obvious since there seems to be very scanty media pickup of the testimonies of antismoking advocacy groups and health experts during the Senate hearings.

Strong backing

The bill received strong backing from different advocacy groups and international health experts including members of the medical academe. Testifying before the Senate ways and means committee, the Action for Economic Reforms (AER), a nongovernment organization, presented strong arguments to back up the passage of the bill.

For instance, a study coauthored by experts from the University of the Philippines, the Department of Health, and the University of Illinois in Chicago cited that millions of Filipinos would be spared from premature deaths due to heart attacks, strokes and cancers if the bill is passed. More than the millions that could be generated in terms of revenues, what should weigh heavier in the balance are the millions of lives that could be saved.

Speaking of lives that could be saved, this becomes more significant if we’re talking about young lives—teenagers or even younger children—who can be spared from these vices by making tobacco and alcohol unaffordable for them. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids cited their experience in Ukraine between 2005 and 2008 when tax imposed on tobacco products were increased only by a small amount. It did not have any effect on tobacco use among the population. When they increased taxes on tobacco products by 405 percent, a significant reduction of tobacco use was noted especially among young people.

“Enactment of this bill, especially in its stronger form, will do more to reduce tobacco use among young people in the Philippines than any other action that the government can take,” said Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids president Matthew Myers.

Good answer

Myers also had a good answer for the argument of tobacco manufacturers that the proposed system of law will hurt the economy.

He said: “It is important to note that money, if consumers do not spend on tobacco, will not evaporate and will not be destroyed; instead it will be spent on other consumer products. In other words, a reduction in tobacco use will not result in less consumer spending that will adversely impact your economy; it will simply shift that spending in ways that will often do more for the economy than money spent on tobacco.”

Hopefully, this saved money will be spent on medicines, nutritious food and other healthy practices.

Dr. Antonio Dans, president of the Philippine Association of Internist Physicians, also gave a convincing presentation that an increase in the prices of tobacco products can help smokers quit the habit.

“Education and counseling (alone) does not work in changing our lifestyle. Unless we start doing something now, then we will continue to lose life after life after life,” he said.

A bit puzzled

A Thai lung expert, who was also a former senator in Thailand, was here recently; and he appeared a bit puzzled why the Philippines had not immediately taken the lead of Thailand when it passed its version of the sin tax law almost 20 years ago. According to Dr. Prakit Vathesatogkit, aside from the astounding health benefits the earlier implementation of the law could have produced, the Philippine government could have generated enough revenue from it, enough to build ambitious projects. “The money we got from the sin taxes for one year alone was enough to build a new sky train system or a subway,” he said in a media interview.

In our case, the additional revenues from the sin tax law are earmarked to be used to finance health programs in line with the vision of universal health care. We hope that when the funds are finally available, they don’t get diverted to other programs the government would later find to be more urgent. That would indeed be sad if health takes a back seat again.