Friday, February 19, 2010
Whenever an increase in tobacco taxes is debated, opponents inevitably declare the taxes regressive and say such taxes take money from people who can least afford to lose it and in the process takes food of that families table.
A new study
For example, in Indonesia, where 18 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, the smoking rate is approximately 3 percent for women and 60 percent for men. The World Bank estimates that tobacco is the nation’s second-biggest business and the second-largest expenditure among the country’s poor.