Does Cigarette Tax Affect Smokers?: the Thailand Controversy

Abstract

Price policies involving taxation have been used to control smoking not only in Thailand but also in other countries around the world. The objectives were to determine associations between cigarette tax rates and cigarette sale volumes, cigarette tax revenues, cigarette price, number of smokers, and market shares of locally produced and imported cigarette. This study reviewed the retrospective data, trends and predicted value of excise cigarette tax on cigarette sale volumes, number of smokers, cigarette prices and tax revenues from the Thailand Health Profile 2008-2010 supported by Ministry of Public Health. The result of correlations were classified into 1) significant positive correlation between cigarette tax rates and cigarette price, sale volumes of imported cigarettes, cigarette tax revenues, predicted number of smokers, predicted cigarette price, predicted sale volumes of imported cigarettes, and predicted cigarette tax revenues (p < 0.001). 2) significant negative correlation between cigarette tax rates and total sale volumes of cigarettes (p < 0.009), predicted total sale volumes of cigarettes, and predicted sale volumes of cigarettes produced by Thailand Tobacco Monopoly (p < 0.001). The study revealed the rising of the cigarette tax associated with decrement of total sale volumes of cigarettes, and increment of cigarette prices, and cigarette tax revenues. The contrasts of the study were the more cigarette tax rising, the sale volumes of imported cigarettes were increased and the number of smokers were not significantly changed. The study recommended that implementing tax policies, price policies on tobacco products to contribute to the health objectives related to reducing tobacco consumption, excise tax rising might not be the best way to make them an effective tool for tobacco control in Thailand, tax policies should be designed carefully and implemented efficiently with other health promotion and prevention strategies.