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The Tobacco Control Research and Knowledge Management Center (TRC) today revealed that it is now time to have a new Tobacco Product Control Act. This new Tobacco Product Control Act is proposed to benefit: (1) Families of smokers who will have benefit from this Act as currently the number of smokers is 11 million, and 337,679 of these smokers are children 15 – 18 years old, and it will (2) Reduce expenditures for health care caused by tobacco-related diseases and also reduce money spent in the family to buy cigarettes.

Dr. Siriwan Pitayarangsarit, Director of the Tobacco Control Research and Knowledge and Management Center (TRC), Mahidol University confirmed that the Tobacco Product Control Act. B.E. 2535 (1992) which was in force for more than 25 years is less effective in the last five years because now there are a lot of imported cigarettes. The number of smokers has reached 11 million with these smokers at risk of lung and other cancers, stroke, emphysema, and many other diseases. Cigarette use is also a cause of disease burden and health and economic expenses which cost more than 50,000 million baht per year or 0.5% of GDP. If the Tobacco Product Control Act is not modified to update it, it would not foster success in pursuing the purposes of the Thai strategic plan for Non – communicable disease reduction, 2014 – 2018. The aims of this strategy are to reduce tobacco consumption to 15% following the Global NCD Target for reducing tobacco use by 30% by 2025.
“There are new forms of tobacco products produced for consumers. Adolescents are especially aware of and accept that they can easily access cigarettes. However, the current Tobacco Product Control Act has not clearly defined new tobacco products such as smokeless tobacco, tobacco through water pipes, tobacco used through electronic devices and so forth.

Dr. Siriwan Pitayarangsarit emphasized that the new Tobacco Product Control Act will constrain the tobacco industry from developing their markets aimed at adolescents through various tobacco products, especially the development of new tasty cigarettes, the creation of new cigarette designs, reduction of price by selling cigarettes separately, and the design of beautiful cigarette packages. At retail shops, sale promotions will be banned so there are no advertisements at points of sale, marketing through various media channels using persons (pretties) will be banned as well as advertisement through online media without measures to control tobacco growing or selling.

When the new Tobacco Product Control Act comes into force, it is expected to reduce tobacco demand from adolescents and prevent over 100,000 new initial smokers over per year and prevent a projected economic loss of 15,800 million baht per year on average. This will not affect the excise income of the Ministry of Finance which is adjusted yearly according to inflation. Nowadays, cigarette tax collection is 60,000 million baht per year for import cigarettes (38%) and local cigarettes (62%).

For tobacco farmers, they will still have several channels to sell tobacco such as selling to the Thailand Tobacco Monopoly (1,600 million baht) and for export (2,250 million baht). The remaining tobacco could be sold to local shredded tobacco entrepreneurs. Therefore, tobacco farmers will have less effect on local demand, and have enough time to switch to grow other plants like food crops with less danger to health.

To request additional information, please contact:
Khun Pornphun Pookritsana
Tobacco Control Research and Knowledge Management Center (TRC) Tel.: 2354-5346, 087-347-2727
E-mail: pornphan@trc.or.th
Support by: Thai Health Promotion Foundation