Leader: Lower tax on snus – Dagens Industri

To raise the tax snuff, more than on cigarettes, is a pattern the past ten years. Higher tax on cigarettes may lead to increased smuggling. This means loss of tax revenue, but also to criminal networks fattened. The risk that a black snuff market arises is less. To knock the legs out organized crime is of course important position but high tax on snuff affecting public health and Swedish companies.

In yesterday published prestigious New England Journal of Medicine article by three researchers recommend that tobacco products are taxed according to how dangerous they are. Snus and e-cigarettes should be significantly cheaper than cigarettes. Smokers need to be enticed to switch to less harmful nicotine products.

It is wise. A study published last year by the National Board conducted in collaboration with the Karolinska Institute and the Swedish National Institute of Public Health, estimated that smoking kills 12,000 people a year. Smoking is responsible for more than one in ten deaths in Sweden. About 100,000 people a year fall ill from smoking-related diseases, according to the same study. In Sweden, many smokers who have been put out and instead switched to snus. It should be encouraged. Swedish men are the population group in Europe with the lowest rate of lung cancer.

The Government is entire tobacco legislation as part of the implementation of the EU’s tobacco directive. In September, the next progress report. Unfortunately, snuff treated as cigarettes in all forms of regulation.

The objective must reasonably be primarily to save lives and reduce health care costs. It is unreasonable to significantly less harmful snuff taxed more heavily than the more dangerous cigarettes. In addition, it strikes against the Swedish company that produces snuff. The domestic market is crucial for many of these companies because of the EU’s remarkable export ban. Swedish snus manufacturing employs 3,000 people and snuff are important to be in the Swedish small-scale retail. Ministry of Finance’s narrow approach to snus as a dairy cow to the Treasury to be questioned. To prevent cigarette smuggling is a task for the Minister of Justice rather than to Magdalena Andersson.