Cabinet pressured to decide on tobacco tax

Swiss smokers enjoy some of the lowest tobacco prices in Western Europe swissinfo.ch

The Swiss cabinet has been urged to decide whether to impose a tax on tobacco.

A tax would make cigarettes more costly in Switzerland, at a time when anti-smoking groups have called for a cigarette price hike, to put Swiss prices in-line with European Union levels.

A coalition of nine organisations recently launched a campaign for “massive increases” in price in an effort to stem the nation’s burgeoning tobacco addiction. They called for an increase to SFr5.60 ($2.82), from the current standard-pack cost of SFr4.80.

That proposal is a sharp rebuke for the Swiss Tax Office plan to increase tobacco taxes by just 10 cents this year, which the coalition condemns as a weak “cent-by-cent” approach.

Cheap smokes

Currently, Swiss smokers enjoy some of the lowest tobacco prices in Western Europe – a startling exception to the nation’s otherwise higher prices.

Critics say the relative affordability of cigarettes has resulted in one of the highest smoking-rates in the world.

Richard Müller, director of the Swiss Foundation for Alcohol and other Drug Problems
said Switzerland has more than a million smokers (out of a population of 7 million), and an alarmingly high participation rate among 18-to-25 year-olds.

Young smokers

According to some estimates, nearly half of all young adults smoke, while 7 percent of 11 to 16-year-olds also admit smoking.

Health groups are alarmed by the human costs of smoking and passive smoking. At least 8,000 Swiss die every year from tobacco-related diseases.

Müller said smoking was still the single most common cause of early death.

And while the health-costs associated with smoking top SFr10 billion per year, cigarette taxes only contribute SFr1.8 billion to public coffers, Müller said.

At the same time, smokers are encouraged to keep smoking through SFr120 million worth of tobacco advertising every year.

Müller said he was particularly alarmed by the “instant satisfaction” many young people find in smoking.

Hip-pocket nerve

Unless dramatic preventative action is taken – particularly by targeting the low cost of cigarettes – Switzerland is on the verge of a “new tobacco epidemic”, Müller said.

Alberto Holly, a University of Lausanne professor, said a 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes would trigger a four-percent drop in consumption.

Young people are also more sensitive to price increases than adults, Holly said, adding that health was more important than tobacco industry profits.

The Swiss Cigarette Industry Association criticised the high-tax campaign, saying sudden price-hikes would lead to an expansion of black-market and illegal imports of low-quality cigarettes.

The Association also denied that inflating the cost of cigarettes would discourage young smokers.

“In Norway, where cigarettes cost SFr12 per packet, as many, or more 15-year-olds smoke than their counterparts in Switzerland,” an association statement issued this week said.

Ursula Steiner-König of the Swiss Doctors’ Association also backs massive increases in tobacco prices.

“Only if it hurts, will people be prepared to do something to help themselves,” König said.

Simonetta Sommaruga, a prominent Swiss consumer advocate, called for an end to subsidies for Switzerland’s 400 tobacco farmers, and more funding for campaigns to stop smoking.

swissinfo with agencies