HELEN McArdle’s Inside Track article (“'Nanny state' approach to smoking is working”, The Herald, March23) carried some inaccuracies and also failed to highlight the impact and reality that such measures are having on the ground.
Your correspondent stated that taxes on tobacco in the UK make up 16.5 per cent of the price; in the UK tobacco taxes actually make up around 80 per cent of the price of tobacco, rising to 90 per cent on some packs, in part, thanks to an annual duty escalator pursued by successive governments.
What is more, there was no mention in your report of the consequences of such a measure; most noticeably high taxes driving the flood of illicit tobacco widely available including, as evidence from Trading Standards shows, to children; nor the 71 per cent of smokers who buy their tobacco from “non-shop” sources, including abroad. This in turn loses the taxpayer around £3 billion in revenue each year and it is largely the black market and organised criminals who profit.
We also know that the single biggest game changer in stopping people from smoking is not the plethora of restrictions and measures introduced in the last 10 years many of which were driven by the dogma of certain pressure groups, it's actually a market-driven solution, that of course being the emergence of next generation products such as e-cigarettes.
Giles Roca,
Director General,
Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association,
5th Floor, Burwood House, 14-16 Caxton Street, London.
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