[Editorial] Instead of protecting, cigarette price hike blindsides the working class

Posted on : 2014-12-04 15:30 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
 Dec. 1. Starting on Jan. 1
Dec. 1. Starting on Jan. 1

“It’s supposed to get people to quit smoking.”

That’s what the government and ruling Saenuri Party (NFP) keep saying about the upcoming hike in cigarette prices. Whenever people have accused them of targeting the working class for a tax hike, Deputy Prime Minister Choi Kyung-hwan has countered that the goal “is not to raise tax revenues” and that the decision “was made for public health.”

But while the 2,000 won (US$1.80) increase per pack did go through when the budget was passed on Dec. 2, another item that would have required warning images about the dangers of smoking on cigarette packs was dropped. Hardly consistent with an emphasis on health, and the opposition was just as irresponsible to go along with it.

Warning images rank alongside cigarette price hikes as the leading policy means of encouraging smokers to quit. They’re also politically convenient, since they can be enacted without a tax hike. The argument the policymakers are giving is that it got dropped from the budget bill because it “wasn’t something to be addressed as a budget bill attachment,” but we’re not really sure who they think they’re fooling. They were willing to put up with all the flak from imposing a cigarette price hike; if they were really concerned about the public‘s health, they could have instituted warning image requirements as a first step before the situation came down to a budget battle. At the very least, they could have finished the preliminary review to allow for a passage with the budget. When we also consider that South Korea ratified the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which required the introduction of warning images by 2008, the omission starts looking less like a mistake and more like design.

In the end, it really does look like the goal of the tobacco price hike was to shake down the working class to make up a tax revenue shortfall. It‘s also becoming more clear just how empty the promises of “social services without higher taxes” were. The government estimates the hike will bring in another 2.8 trillion won (US$2.5 billion) in taxes, which is just about 30% of the 10 trillion won (US$9 billion) shortfall predicted for 2014.

On Dec. 3, the Korea Taxpayers’ Association issued a released titled “Ten Unpleasant Truths about the Cigarette Price Hike.” “This unprecedented increase in indirect taxes that are borne almost entirely by poor members of the working class is grossly unfair,” the document said. Seeing how quick the politicians were to raise cigarette prices, and how reluctant they’ve been to introduce warning images, is enough to explain why more and more people are suspecting that cigarette company lobbying is at work.

The administration and ruling party should have come clean from the beginning and then gotten the public’s understanding. It only makes the public angrier to see these “benevolent protectors” turn into the same ones who are blindsiding them.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

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