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In today's podcast, experts debate higher tobacco taxes and other efforts to reduce skyrocketing rates of tobacco consumption in China
在今天的播客中，专家对高额的烟草税率以及减少中国烟草消费率所作出的努力进行了讨论。
Over 10 years ago, China became a party to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on TobaccoControl, an international treaty intended to reduce tobacco-related diseases and deaths. The country's toplegislature formally ratified the convention in August 2005, but implementation has stalled. Now experts are saying the country must redouble its efforts and explore higher taxation to reduce tobacco smoking. Yang Gonghuan, the former deputy director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and an advocate of tobacco control said that measures on tobacco control remain weak. In 2012, Beijing issued a document setting targets for tobacco control for the following three years, including drafting a national law on tobacco control to reduce the youth smoking rate from 11.5 percent in 2010 to 8.5 percent by 2015, and cutting the adult smoking rate to less than 25 percent. Yang said almost no progress has been made in two years. Hu Dewei, a health economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said increasing tax rates and prices are the most effective measures in tobacco control and come with the lowest administrative costs. Hu estimated that raising the cost of each pack of cigarettes by 1 yuan would spur 4.1 million people to quit smoking and add 85.4 billion yuan to government coffers. Some 128 billion packs of cigarettes are sold every year in the country, and the tax ratio per pack is low. In China, some 67 percentof the cost of a pack of cigarettes is tax, while the figure in developed countries is 200 percent. Duringthis year's meeting of the top legislature in March, the minister of finance, Lou Jiwei, said that the consumption tax can be levied on both the production and wholesale stages of the industry. His statement was interpreted as a signal that changes were on the way. Meanwhile a tax administration official said the current economic situation provides a good opportunity for raising taxes, and efforts by tobacco control advocates have begun to influence policymakers.
10多年前，中国成为了《世界卫生组织烟草控制框架公约》的一员，这是一项意图减少烟草疾病和死亡的国际性公约。中国最高立法机关在2005年8月正式认可此项公约，但是没有进行进一步的实施。如今，许多专家认为中国必须更加努力来进一步增加高额税率减少吸烟。中国疾病预防控制中心前副主任杨功焕，她也是烟草控制的有力倡导者，她认为国家对于烟草的控制仍然非常有限。2012年，北京出台了未来三年烟草控制目标，包括对烟草控制起草法律，从而来减少青少年吸烟率，2010年，青少年吸烟率是11.5%，到2015年之前，要将这一数字较少到8.5%，成人吸烟率减少到25%以下。杨认为这两年没有明显的进步。伯克利加利福尼亚大学健康经济学教授Hu Dewei认为增加税率和价格是打击烟草的最有利的措施，而且所造成的管理成本也是最低的。胡预计将每盒烟草的价格提高一元将促使4100万人戒烟，政府也将增加854亿的收入。中国每年销售1280亿盒香烟，每盒香烟的税率非常低。在中国，每盒香烟费用的67%都归功于税收，而在发达国家这一数字是200%。今年3月，中国最高立法机关所进行的会议中，财政部部长楼继伟认为我们能够在烟草生产和烟草产业的批发阶段征收消费税。他的言论传递了一个信号，即中国将作出改变。与此同时，税务管理有关人员认为目前的经济状况将为提高税收提供良机，烟控倡导者也将开始影响法律制定者的抉择。
For Caixin Online, this is Diana Bates.
这是戴安娜·贝茨为您带来的财新新闻报道。
译文属可可英语原创，未经允许，不得转载。
