Tobacco Deliveries Increase As Prices Firm

TOBACCO deliveries at the auction floors have increased by 66 percent as prices continue to firm, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) has said.

Latest TIMB statistics show that by day nine of sales, there was an increase in deliveries from 4,4 million kilogrammes valued at $9,7 million during the same period last year, to 7,3 million kg valued at $16,9 million.

Auction floors opened on March 30 this year.

The statistics also show that the average price has increased from $2,21 per kg last year to $2,32 per kg this year.

Since the opening of the marketing season, the volumes of the crop that has been rejected by buyers has also declined.

TIMB statistics indicate that 8 percent of tobacco has been rejected, a decline from the 15 percent that was rejected last year. Read More>

Time for some plainspeak on tobacco

When Umesh Narain Sharma’s public interest litigation (PIL) was being heard at the Supreme Court, he was battling for his life, recalls his advocate Aishwarya Bhati.

An advocate with the Allahabad High Court, Sharma had been a tobacco consumer for several decades. He was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2010. And just weeks ago, he had to undergo his second surgery after the cancer relapsed.

Sharma’s PIL is against the Centre’s delay in implementing plain packaging norms for tobacco products to make them less attractive to young people. The effort is to stop tobacco products from being “cool” for the next generation so they are protected from getting addicted, says Bhati, who had taken with her to Court a foreign plain pack tobacco product and the locally packed ones to illustrate the difference. The Centre now has to give its response to the Court. Read More>

Labor seizes on reports the government is planning a tobacco tax hike

Labor has seized on reports the Coalition will head to the election with a pledge to raise revenue by increasing the cost of cigarettes, a Labor policy the government once vehemently opposed.

Fairfax Media reported on Thursday that Treasurer Scott Morrison's first budget would contain an increase to the tobacco excise, a measure former Prime Minister Tony Abbott criticised as a tax on "smokos" and workers, when it was first proposed by Labor in 2015.

When asked about the report on ABC's 7.30 on Thursday night, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann did not rule it out, saying that smokers would have to "wait and see."

"I'm obviously not going to comment on measures that may or may not be in the budget on 3rd May," he said.

"The budget will be delivered on 3rd May. There's always a lot of speculation in the lead-up to any budget, so let's just wait and see what will be in the budget on 3rd May," he said.

Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen, who fought against internal opposition to the idea, told Lateline later that night it was clear the government would be heading to the election fighting for a Labor policy. Read More>

First Federal Budget to reportedly include tobacco excise rise

AS the Turnbull government faces the risk of Australia losing its AAA credit rating, an increase in tobacco excise will reportedly be part of this year’s Federal Budget.
Scott Morrison’s joy of an unexpected drop in the jobless rate will have been quickly dashed by a stark warning that Australia’s triple-A credit rating could be at risk after his first budget.
One of the world’s major credit rating agencies is not happy with what it is hearing from the treasurer just weeks out from the May 3 budget.

Moody’s Investors Service notes the treasurer has excluded revenue-raising measures when talking about his budget aims, and given the government’s previous difficulties in reducing welfare benefits, it believes actual spending cuts may be modest.

“Without such measures, limited spending cuts are unlikely to meaningfully advance the government’s aim of balanced finances by the fiscal year ending June 2021 and government debt will likely continue to climb, a credit negative for Australia,” Moody’s says. Read More>

Untaxed tobacco, bootleg products at 10 Sleeping Tiger Imports stores puts owner behind bars

A Walker businessman who sold counterfeit name-brand clothing at 10 Sleeping Tiger Imports stores across Michigan and violated state tobacco tax laws was sentenced Thursday to 10 months in the Kent County Jail.

Timothy Roger Szubinski in February pleaded guilty to selling counterfeit goods and to violating Michigan tobacco tax laws. The felony offenses are each punishable by up to five years in prison.

Michigan State Police last summer searched his 10 Michigan stores and a Grand Rapids warehouse, where they found thousands of products determined to be illegal knock-offs of brands popular with millennials – from Monster Energy T-shirts to Fox Head necklaces.

The investigation was originally launched over tobacco tax violations. Read More>

Oncologists welcome govt steps to curb tobacco consumption

The pan-Maharashtra cancer specialists, called Maharashtra Cancer Warriors, have welcomed the steps taken by government to curb tobacco consumption that includes enforcing new pictorial warning on tobacco. In a letter to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, the cancer surgeons have expressed their appreciation for the enforcement of section 7 of Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA) for seizure of tobacco, worth Rs 300 crore.

Satish Sonawane, Co-Ordinator, Maharashtra Cancer Warriors said at least two crore people in Maharashtra are  addicted to some form of tobacco that is causing epidemic proportion of fatal diseases such as heart attack and stroke apart from cancers. Mouth cancer is the commonest cancer in men in the state due to rampant chewing habit. Maharashtra was the first state to ban flavoured chewing tobacco and supari apart from gutkha. Read More>

Delhi Government Bans Sale Of All Forms Of Chewable Tobacco For 1 Year

The Delhi government has banned for one year the sale, purchase and storage of all forms of chewable tobacco, including "guktha, pan masala, khaini and zarda", in the national capital.

The Department of Food Safety on Thursday issued a notification in this regard.

According to the notification, unpackaged products of chewable tobacco, too, are covered under the ambit of the ban.

"The manufacture, storage, distribution, or sale of tobacco which is either flavoured, scented or mixed... and whether going by the name or form of gutka, pan, masala, flavoured/scented tobacco, kharra, or otherwise... whether packaged or unpackaged and/or sold as one product, or though packaged as separate products, sold or distributed in such manner so as to easily facilitate mixing by the consumer" is prohibited for a period of one year, the notification stated. 

Health department officials said a notification was issued by Delhi government in September, 2012, in pursuance of a series of directions from Supreme Court for a ban on 'gutkha' in the city. Read More>