Policy Research To Strengthen The Tobacco Control Effect Of Tobacco Consumption In China

Smoking is not only harmful for human health,but also causes a lot of problems on environment,natural resources and economy.It has been a common concern of governments in the world that the tobacco control must be reinforced.In 2003,the Chinese government signed the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.This convention came into effective at 2006 and began to play its role on tobacco control.Recently,the production and consumption of tobacco outside of China are decreasing gradually;however,it is keeping increasing in China.In 2013,Chinese market takes 43% global legal sales volume of cigar and cigarette.Framework Convention on Tobacco Control gives several solutions on tobacco control and the first of it are measures throughout price and taxes.These measures are also been proved effective through the practice on those tobacco-controlled countries.Chinese government raised the tobacco consumption tax rate in 2009 and its effect on tobacco control is extremely limited according to the selling prices and consumption of tobacco and it just has a result on improvement of tax revenue of the government.This paper is focusing on finding the reason why the effects of tobacco consumption tax on tobacco control was weakened according the analyzing of current situation and existing problem of tobacco consumption tax policy in China.On this basis,combined with the features of tobacco consumption in China and other related international experiences,this paper would give some policy suggestions of enhancing the effects of tobacco consumption tax on tobacco control.According to the research of this paper,the increasing of the tobacco consumption tax rate does not have a positive effect on tobacco control.Its immediate cause is the lack of linkage between tobacco consumption tax and price,the unreasonable standard on cigarette classification,huge variety of brand of cigarette and huge differences of selling prices of cigarette.Furthermore,there is some deep reason such as the tobacco consumption tax bearing in China is generally lower,the Tobacco Monopolization,which combined the politics and industry,is not reasonable,and the local government's financial dependence on tobacco selling is serious.Therefore,the key issue to enhance the effects of tobacco consumption tax on tobacco control is doing something essential.According to the features of supply and demand in Chinese market,on the one hand,the tobacco consumption tax,especially tax payable for Consumption Tax following the amount on volume method,should be increased;on the other hand,there need to be some reform on the Tobacco Monopolization,and the Mechanism of sharing tobacco selling revenue by central government and local government.After the calculation of the space of adjustment on tobacco consumption tax in China,this paper thinks that it's necessary to raise the factory tobacco consumption tax of Type A cigarettes from 56% to 82% and Type B cigarettes from 36% to 64%,with the purpose of decrease 10% of tobacco demand in China.