Director of programs at the Vision for Alternative Development Ghana (VALD), Labran Musah, has expressed the need for government to increase the tax on tobacco products.

According to him, the move will invariably dissuade people from actively engaging in smoking. He explained that taxes are one of the best measure most countries are imposing on their products to deter people from smoking.

“Government should put in measure for increasing taxes because the taxes that were levied on the product for us, we think that it’s not punitive enough. Government needs to up the taxes, if possible, increase it by another 50% so that we can have the real impact that we want. Because at the end of it all, people who smoke will definitely have some complications…”
Labran Musah

Mr Musah further lamented the implication of affordable tobacco on children. He noted that at their age, children are a lot more susceptible to luring adverts to purchase such cheap products.

However, he indicated that the imposition of high taxes will also help improve public health in the country and also ensure that government makes enough revenue to compensate victims who end up sick from smoking.

“No matter what you do, you will get problems, so once you get sick, the monies that have been accrued, government should at least earmark a percentage if not all the funding to support healthcare… “
Labran Musah

Commenting on his outfit’s report which contended that the tobacco industry is influencing implementation of excise duty amendment law passed by government last year, Mr Musah explained that throughout the process of the excise tax implementation, there were a lot of activities that actually went on.

He noted that one of them had to do with the public health community which was very incensed prior to the bill being passed into law.

Criticism of tax imposition on tobacco

Furthermore, Mr Musah decried the “drama that happened in parliament where it has to go through voting before a public health intervention”.

“So, the point for us is we actually had to embark on some study to understand what extent the industry got involved in all of this. Now, you wouldn’t find clearly a very direct influence of lobbying, but activities like media engagements, drumming home the fact that the taxes would lead to job losses and the fact that the government will overburden the people with taxes.
“We also cited some documents that were sent to the various sector ministries, urging them to kind of ad taxes to tobacco products and other unhealthy products.”
Labran Musah

Moreover, Mr Musah expressed disappointment in the fact that there’s been some civil society organizations who were also fronting for the tobacco industry by joining the “chorus” and also advocating for the fact that a tax increment on tobacco products will lead to a lot of illicit activities including smuggling of tobacco.

However, he revealed that the excise tax that was proposed by the minister of finance was actually a “corrective tax” because it does so many things including the fact that it reduces exposure and accessibility to children who are mostly the target of industry.

“That’s the reason why you’ll see that these products were very cheap in the market, so anybody can access, exposing our youth and children to the products.”
Labran Musah