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Yunnan nixes plan to use tobacco to fund disaster relief
By Li Qian |
September 13, 2012, Thursday
|
Online Edition
Online Edition
YUNNAN Province has ditched a plan to increase cigarette production by 400,000 boxes to raise tax revenue to assist disaster relief in its earthquake-stricken areas.
Media reported earlier that the Yunnan Province Development and Reform Commission asked the central government for added cigarette production quota worth 600 million yuan (US$94.7 million) in tobacco tax to assist the reconstruction in Yiliang County where 81 people died in the earthquake.
The commission said those reports were unfounded because the central government has allocated 100 million yuan for reconstruction in additional to 9.5 billion yuan of relief, the Beijing News reported today.
The reports already sparked public criticism. An anti-smoking activist group, Think Tank Research Center for Health Development, sent a protest letter to the country's top economic planner, accusing it of "inappropriate" practice.
China is the biggest tobacco producer in the world and more than 1 million Chinese die from smoking-related diseases each year. The 400,000 boxes are enough for 3 million people to smoke for a year, it said.
Increasing the cigarette output quota is against the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, it added.
Wu Yiqun, an anti-tobacco activist, said it would be an egregious error to relieve a disaster by creating another disaster.
Media reported earlier that the Yunnan Province Development and Reform Commission asked the central government for added cigarette production quota worth 600 million yuan (US$94.7 million) in tobacco tax to assist the reconstruction in Yiliang County where 81 people died in the earthquake.
The commission said those reports were unfounded because the central government has allocated 100 million yuan for reconstruction in additional to 9.5 billion yuan of relief, the Beijing News reported today.
The reports already sparked public criticism. An anti-smoking activist group, Think Tank Research Center for Health Development, sent a protest letter to the country's top economic planner, accusing it of "inappropriate" practice.
China is the biggest tobacco producer in the world and more than 1 million Chinese die from smoking-related diseases each year. The 400,000 boxes are enough for 3 million people to smoke for a year, it said.
Increasing the cigarette output quota is against the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, it added.
Wu Yiqun, an anti-tobacco activist, said it would be an egregious error to relieve a disaster by creating another disaster.
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