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An anti-smoking organization defends the "minimum price" of cigarettes.
Professor Luke Clancy
ASH - "Action on Smoking and Health" has entered the anti-smoking field with a new chairman, Professor emeritus Luke Clancy: "Consultant Respiratory Physician at St. James's Hospital and Medical Director of Peamount Hospital, Dublin."
The European Union has just undertaken legal action against Ireland (as well as Italy and Austria) for its cigarette minimum price policy, because it "distorts market competition and benefits only the manufacturers by safeguarding their profit margins".
The EU maintains that taxation on all cigarettes is the best way to set their prices… comparable to the discovery of hot water!
However, the authoritative Professor Luke Clancy explains that it's better if the price of Marlboros does not increase. Price increases must be made only for the so-called “economical” brands, and only with the imposition of the minimum price, not with heavier taxation.
Is, perhaps, the State suffering for too much tax revenue?
Yesmoke is fighting for the abolition of the minimum price with the slogan "It's better to give our money to the State rather than to Philip Morris", and it proposes that the prices to the public should be raised with tax increases on all the brands.
This would lead to a price rise also for the so-called "premium brand" cigarettes (Marlboro, to start with), which are sold at a higher price thanks to decades of shrewd publicity campaigns and "mythical" slogans.
In this case, Philip Morris would have to make a tough decision: it would either have to give up a price increase proportional to the tax increase considerably reducing its profits, or let its prices rise losing some of its market share.
The Theory of Professor Luke Clancy
"Taxation is not a sufficient mechanism in smaller markets such as Ireland where the tobacco industry may decide to challenge the government's national health measures by absorbing the taxation increases in whole or in part."
"The reality is that where minimum pricing doesn't exist, the industry manipulates the price and they give special offers to entice people into smoking their products," ASH's new chairman Professor Luke Clancy said.
As always, unfortunately, everything revolves around one fixed point: avoid increasing the prices of Marlboros, as if this could be an attack on the health of the citizens.
Professor Luke Clancy, respiratory physician, evidently is not familiar with the mechanism of the so-called “Minimum Excise (Accisa Minima)”, which would heavily penalise any company that lowered its prices even by a few cents per pack for a few days.
In fact, although the price of most cigarettes is higher than the limit imposed by the minimum price, up to today no one has dared lower its prices for promotional purposes.
So, why bring up a problem that doesn't exist, in favor the minimum price and opposed to the tax increase system? Why should any normal citizen want the State to renounce its tax revenues?
Without counting that it would be enough to tax cigarettes as much as needed also to block the "special offers". Might Prof. Clancy's "Action on Smoking and Health", on principle, be opposed to the increase of tobacco taxes?
Mystification in the Tobacco World
A selection of confidential documents from the makers of Marlboro show how they have bought up scientists, set up learned societies and infiltrated respected institutions.
There are countless cases of corruption of organisations and scientists instigated by the tobacco giants; they have been proven and are of public domain. Who says Luke Clancy might not be one of these? Why is he so determined that Philip Morris should not be forced to raise the price of its Marlboros?
The interests behind the minimum cigarette price policy can be measured, in a single country, in billions of dollars; a brown envelope of 1 or 2 million can be made available without problems for a “serious and authoritative” contribution on the issue reported by press agencies and newspapers around the world.
The impression is that ASH is doing what the politicians of Ireland, Austria and Italy have done: they are defending the interests of Philip Morris on the pretext of safeguarding the public health.
It would be interesting to look into this paradox and to bring to light the possible umpteenth mystification that damages the general public.
More info
Anti-smoking groups fear price war on cigarettes - Independent.ie - 25/08/2007
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