MOSCOW, September 15 (RIA Novosti) - Smokers in South Korea have called on the government to halt its plans to increase cigarette prices by 80 percent, claiming its goal of reducing smoking will actually increase the financial burden of low-income individuals, Yonhap News Agency reported Monday.
"We oppose the [government's] push for a sharp increase in cigarette prices," members of "I Love Smoking," an online community of smokers, stated in a news conference addressing the National Assembly in Seoul.
"Low-income people will have no choice but to bear the brunt of the planned jump in cigarette prices. The government should drop the plan and come up with a more acceptable solution," the community was quoted as saying by the news agency.
The group announced an organized online campaign to petition the South Korean government’s plan. Smokers against the plan argue that the government is unfairly shifting the country’s tax burden to the working class.
“The government is trying to kill two birds with one stone - get more revenue and promote public health,” a professor of tax law at the University of Seoul was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.
Though officials claim the price hike, raising the price of cigarettes by $1.92 per pack, is an effort to reduce the country’s smoking rate, critics argue the plan is actually designed to increase tax revenue, according to Yonhap.
If approved by parliament, the plan will mark the first increase in tobacco prices for a decade and take effect starting January 1, 2015.
Some 44 percent of men in South Korea smoke, a dangerously high rate if compared to the 25 percent average among the 34 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). According to Bloomberg, South Korea is ranked eighth globally for per capita tobacco consumption, while Belarus and Russia are at the top of the list. The Korean government predicts the price increase will reduce the smoking rate by 10 percent.
