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MANILA - An official of the World Health Organization and a group of physicians on Tuesday challenged senators to explain their resistance to sin tax reform despite their ratification of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005.
"If you open the preamble of the FCTC, it says that tobacco causes disease, death, suffering, etc. And this was a position that was ratified by the Philippine Senate. In short, there is a position that has already been taken by the Senate on the harm of tobacco," Dr. Susan Pineda-Mercado, WHO-Western Pacific regional adviser, said during a briefing.
"So it would be interesting to find out why there is still a question about something that has already been ratified by the same senators who agreed to that conclusion that tobacco is harmful to health," she added.
During the first hearing on the sin tax reform bill, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile questioned the validity of claims by health experts that smoking causes non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension and lung cancer. He said he started to smoke at 9 years old, quit when he was already 65 years old and has yet to suffer from any of these illnesses.
He also asked the Department of Health to furnish him with statistics on the incidence of these diseases in the tobacco planting regions of Northern Luzon to prove their point.
"In the rural areas I hardly know anybody who died of cancer and we have tobacco everywhere in Cagayan," he said.
According to Senate Resolution No. 195, all of the senators of the 13th Congress ratified the FCTC. Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who authored Senate Bill Nos. 2998 and 3249 calling for sin tax reform, sponsored SR 195.
The list of the senators of the 13th Congress can be seen here: http://www.senate.gov.ph/senators/sen13th.asp
Back then, Enrile gave the concurrent speech for the resolution on FCTC.
"A ratification is an act of government. It's like the whole Philippine government going into the international treaty or agreement. It is an institutional position," Pineda-Mercado said.
Senator Ralph Recto, chair of the Committee on Ways and Means, said he is not against the hike in sin taxes, claiming he was looking for a balance between the need for government to raise revenues while protecting industry players' right to make a profit.
He said the key to passing the reform measure is finding the "sweet spot."
According to Frank Chaloupka, University of Illinois at Chicago Health Policy Center director, the "sweet spot" may be the 70 percent excise tax based on retail price that other countries are imposing on cigarettes. He said this level would allow the government to collect "real" revenues while allowing the industry to survive.
He said the sin tax levels that are proposed on any of the two senate bills and one House bill - all of which are bucked by industry players - are below 70 percent.
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