Plan to Enlarge Health Warning Labels

Tobacco Control Inspectors carrying out their duties. The government is making plans to enlarge warning signs on cigarette packaging in a bid to reduce the number of smokers.

Hong Kong’s tobacco industry was up in arms on Monday against a plan by the health authorities to enlarge health warning labels, saying it would not help lower the smoking rate and goes against the interests of tobacco companies.

Major industry players called on the government to withdraw the proposed measures.

The Food and Health Bureau submitted new tobacco control proposals to the Legislative Council (LegCo) in May, calling for the size of graphic health warnings on tobacco products to be enlarged from 50 percent of the two largest surfaces of cigarette packets to 85 percent.

Such a move, it said, would help lower the city’s smoking prevalence rate.

The Coalition on Tobacco Affairs (CTA) - made up of 90 percent of the city’s tobacco business associations - argued that the plan would not help reduce the number of smokers, based on a study it had commissioned earlier.

After studying statistics from the Census and Statistics Department, Kevin Tsui, an associate professor at the Department of Economics of Clemson University, found that the pre-existing trend of smoking rates did not change after health warning labels had been made bigger.

He had studied the change in the number of daily smokers in Hong Kong since 1982. Three rounds of health warning label enlargement were ordered by the government in 1994, 2000 and 2007, none of which led to a drop in the local smoking rate.

Compared with other places that have not imposed warning labels, no significant difference can be seen.

Tsui compared smoking prevalence data in Hong Kong with that of the United States where no warnings are required on the front or back of Marlboro cigarette packets. He found the smoking prevalence trends were almost parallel as percentages in both places had been lowered by only 2 to 3 percent in the past 15 years.

Owing to the promotion and education work conducted by the authorities since the 1980s, all Hong Kong residents are fully aware of the negative impact smoking has on health, the CTA saying that a bigger health warning won’t help further lower the smoking rate.

According to the latest statistics released in May, Hong Kong’s smoking rate now stands at 10.7 percent - 13 percent lower than in 1982.

Hong Kong can go further to quit smoking, says WHO official

Meeting the recommended international standard for tobacco tax is not enough for Hong Kong - it can and should go further, a World Health Organisation official said ahead of an expected increase in the cost of smoking in Wednesday's budget.

Dr Carmen Audera-Lopez, acting team leader of the WHO's tobacco-free initiative in the Western Pacific region, said an expected increase in tobacco tax would only make up for inflation since the last rise in 2011.

Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah is expected to increase the flat HK$34 duty on a pack of 20 cigarettes by between HK$4 and HK$8, meaning that the tax rate would be above the WHO recommended rate of 70 per cent on all brands, an increase of between 11 and 24 per cent. Mainland brands like Double Happiness sell for about HK$43 per pack, with international brands such as Camel costing HK$50 to HK$52.

"The Hong Kong government has the capacity to go higher." Audera-Lopez said. "The suggested tax increase is only a moderate one and considering that it has not been increased since 2011, it is probably just compensating for inflation."

For tax rises to work, she said, they must be regular and make the habit less affordable. Encouraging governments to increase tobacco taxes will be the theme of World No Tobacco Day on May 31.

Anti-smoking campaigners had pressed the government to go much further, with some suggesting the duty be doubled.

Lam Tai-hing, chair professor of community medicine at the University of Hong Kong, said experiences from other regions showed that drastic tax measures were needed to make an impact. Doubling tax could lead to a fall of one percentage point in the proportion of the population who smoked, he said.