PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

It costs rough­ly half a $500,000 mil­lion to treat a lung can­cer pa­tient in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This fact was one of the points raised by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert in a mo­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day to in­crease tax­a­tion on to­bac­co prod­ucts un­der Pro­vi­sion­al Col­lec­tion of Tax­es Or­der.

“So we have de­cid­ed for health rea­sons as I said, it costs half a mil­lion dol­lars to take care of one pa­tient with lung can­cer. So we’ve de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue with the sys­tem of de-in­cen­tivis­ing smok­ing and this or­der will lead to a 20 per cent in­crease in ex­cise du­ty on lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured to­bac­co prod­ucts,” he said.

“Smok­ing is not just dan­ger­ous in terms of lung can­cer. It’s al­so a risk fac­tor for can­cers of the mouth, the lar­ynx, the phar­ynx oe­soph­a­gus, the kid­ney, the cervix, the liv­er, the blad­der, the pan­creas, stom­ach, colon and it is a risk fac­tor for leukaemia. There is no safe way to use to­bac­co. Ab­solute­ly none,” said Im­bert dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion.

Im­bert ex­plained that he re­ceived let­ters from the Can­cer So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go con­cern­ing the in­crease of tax­es, as Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to be one of high­est con­sumers of to­bac­co in the age range 30 to 50.

“I got one let­ter from the Can­cer So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go which in­di­cat­ed that our tax­es on to­bac­co are among the low­est in the world a frac­tion of what ob­tains an­oth­er coun­try. And a num­ber of ar­ti­cles and pa­pers and sta­tis­tics on what can­cer does and the dam­age that to­bac­co does to peo­ple and how it caus­es can­cer and so on so I got one let­ter from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Can­cer So­ci­ety, urg­ing us to in­crease tax­es on to­bac­co to de-in­cen­tivise,” said Im­bert.

“It has been shown that in­creas­es in tax­es on to­bac­co in Trinidad and To­ba­go do ex­it down­ward pres­sure on con­sump­tion,” said the Fi­nance Min­is­ter.

How­ev­er, Op­po­si­tion MP Rush­ton Paray ques­tioned the re­al in­ten­tion of the in­crease, as he be­lieved the mo­tive had more to do with rev­enue gen­er­a­tion than wider pub­lic health.

“What we are de­bat­ing has noth­ing to do with as the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance would have said in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, the neg­a­tive con­se­quences as­so­ci­at­ed with the high con­sump­tion of these prod­ucts. It has all to do with rais­ing mon­ey here and there and every­where with­out a sys­temic strate­gic plan,” said Paray.

“This is the very same gov­ern­ment that rushed dur­ing the heights of the COVID-19 shut­down to re­sume the op­er­a­tion of a lo­cal to­bac­co man­u­fac­tur­er. Madam Speak­er, on May 9th, while most na­tion­al op­er­a­tions were closed, the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced that three man­u­fac­tur­ers will be grant­ed per­mis­sion to re­sume ac­tiv­i­ties one was TCL, which is our ce­ment man­u­fac­ture new iron steel pro­duc­er and West In­di­an To­bac­co, which makes to­bac­co prod­ucts,” said Paray.

He al­so ques­tioned the de­ci­sion not to com­plete the Na­tion­al On­col­o­gy Cen­tre, which was re­buffed by Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, as the project had stalled long be­fore the pre­vi­ous’ ad­min­is­tra­tion’s tenure while cost­ing $244 mil­lion be­fore the de­ci­sion to stop work on the project.

Deyals­ingh fur­ther ex­plained that the open­ing Lin­ear Ac­cel­er­a­tor (LINAC) Wing at St James al­so reaf­firmed the gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to can­cer treat­ment.

Deyals­ingh al­so ex­plained that the tax in­crease fell in line with a World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) frame­work con­ven­tion that Trinidad and To­ba­go signed over 15 years ago.

“Un­der that WHO spon­sored mea­sure we have signed on and rat­i­fied that we will im­ple­ment both price and tax mea­sures and non-price mea­sures to de­crease de­mand for to­bac­co,” said Deyals­ingh.

The mo­tion was passed in the Par­lia­ment.