A rise in Hong Kong’s tobacco tax has not resulted in “rampant” illicit cigarette trading activities, the government has said.
Lawmaker Johnny Ng raised questions about tobacco control measures at the Legislative Council (LegCo) on Wednesday, when he cited allegations that the trade of duty-not-paid cigarettes in had “worsened” after the government increased tobacco duty for the first time in a decade in February last year.
The increase had upped the typical cost of a pack of 20 cigarettes by HK$12, from around HK$62 to HK$74. It climbed further to HK$96 last month, when finance chief Paul Chan raised tobacco tax for the second consecutive year.
Responding to Ng’s questions, the acting health minister Libby Lee said the number of duty-paid cigarettes in Hong Kong before and after the Covid-19 pandemic was broadly in line with the trend of the overall number of smokers. It showed that the trading of illicit cigarettes did not “worsen” as alleged by some people, she said.
According to the government, there are around 580,000 smokers in Hong Kong, a considerable portion of whom belonged to the low-income bracket.
The number of illicit cigarettes seized reflected the effectiveness of the customs department’s enforcement efforts rather than a rise in the number of illicit cigarettes in the market, Lee said.
“[T]here is no rampant illicit cigarette trading activities as alleged by individual
comments,” an English translation of the official’s reply read.
In May last year, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Christopher Hui told LegCo that there had been a significant increase in the number of illicit cigarettes seized in recent years, after the Customs and Excise Department effectively cracked down on cigarette syndicates.
The authorities were able to intercept the syndicates when they were stocking up their supplies or re-exporting the illicit cigarettes to other regions, the official said.
In 2022 alone, the department detected a total of 28 large-scale imported cigarette smuggling cases and seized around 585 million illicit cigarette sticks, more than double the amount seized in 2021.
Lee said on Wednesday that the government had also stepped up efforts to combat the distribution of smoking product advertisements at housing estates. Joint operations were conducted by the Tobacco and Alcohol Control Office, the police, the Customs and Excise Department and the Housing Department under a co-operation mechanism formed in January.
Since 2021, a total of 12 individuals had been successfully prosecuted for handing out smoking product leaflets, the government said.
Citing studies by the World Health Organization and the World Bank, the acting health chief said on Wednesday that tobacco duty and the prices of tobacco products had a limited effect on the market share of illicit cigarettes at a country level.
The government intends to further lower smoking prevalence in the city to from 9.5 per cent in 2021 to 7.8 per cent by 2025, in accordance with the target on tobacco control set by the World Health Organization, she said.
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