HT Bureau
GUWAHATI, Jan 12: Students and youths, on Thursday, urged the President, Prime Minister, and Finance Minister on the ‘National Youth Day’ to increase taxes on all tobacco products in the upcoming budget of 2023-24.
To celebrate the ‘National Youth Day’, the CLPF (Consumers Legal Protection Forum), Assam, in association with the ‘Consumer VOICE’, New Delhi and ‘Seuj Axom’ organized an event on the theme ‘Increase Tobacco Tax, Saves Lives’ and formed a human chain at the premises of Kamrup Academy Higher Secondary School, here. The participants appealed to the President, Prime Minister and Finance Minister to increase excise duty on all tobacco products.
Related Posts:
According to the students, increasing excise on all tobacco products can be a very effective policy measure to address the immediate need to raise revenue by the Central Government. Besides being a winning proposition for generating revenue, the step will also go a long way in reducing tobacco use and related diseases.
Attending the human chain, CLPF secretary advocate Ajoy Hazarika said that “Some of the major suggestions made to the President, Prime Minister and the Finance Minister by these youth groups include significantly increasing the existing tax burden so that tobacco products become unaffordable by the vulnerable (especially the youths) tax-induced price increases effectively reduce incidences of tobacco-related deaths while generating substantial additional tobacco tax revenues, which can be utilized for national health priority like strengthening the ‘Ayushman Bharat Programme’ and the ‘Fit India Movement’.”
Participating in the programme, Kaberi Borah, Principal, Kamrup Academy Higher Secondary School pointed out, “Tobacco use not only harms our health but it is also a threat to the health of our friends and family. Additionally, tobacco users also have a greater risk of developing severe cases of cancer. By making them unaffordable, we can save youth from deadly tobacco.”
Addressing the gathering, Bishal Das and Dipankar Chaudhury, student of Kamrup Academy Higher Secondary School, Guwahati, said, “To discourage the use of tobacco products, I urge the Government to raise taxes on all tobacco products to make them unaffordable so that children and teens are not going to fall into the trap of the cheap tobacco products.”
It is worth mentioning that India has the second-largest number (268 million) of tobacco users in the world. The recent ‘Global Youth Tobacco Survey’ (GYTS-2019) shows that nearly one-fifth of the students aged 13-15 years are consuming tobacco in some form. Also, in India, on an average, children — as young as 10 years — start tobacco consumption. The total direct and indirect cost of diseases attributable to tobacco use was a staggering Rs 182,000 crore which is nearly 1.8% of India’s GDP.
