Tobacco & WHO: Risks, Sector Impact & Future Outlook

Rome (Italpress) – “After the European Commission, which with the proposal for revision of the Escription Directive Tabacchi (TED) wants to drastically increase the taxation of all products, including Italian ones without combustion, also assuming the taxation of new products to that applied to traditional products, also the World Health Organization attempts to launch a new hard blow to the entire sector. of the tobacco to be held in Geneva from 17 to 22 November this year “. This is what we read in a note from the Italian Tobacconist Federation.
In the preparatory documents for the next discussions “we read hypotheses of surreal measures – continues the note – including limits to the production and sale shares – including exports – also of Italian innovative products, the introduction of ad hoc sanctioning schemes and regimes to the detriment of the supply chain, the prohibition of use of the filter, which would correspond to a total prohibition for the products currently present on the market, the setting of a maximum of the price of the products fixation of quotas for regulated and pre -established operators, the total prohibition of the activity for the actors of the whole supply chain through the creation of a state planned sales system, the restriction to sales based on the date of birth, to finish the drastic reduction in the number of lawyers on the basis of non -clear selection criteria “.
For the president of the Italian Tabaccai Federation, Mario Antonelli “these regulatory hypotheses are seriously harmful not only of the regulatory power of the individual States of the Union on the definition of the sales and distribution systems, but also of the individual freedom of citizens and of the freedom of business. To experts I would like to remember that Italy has a distribution model based on channeled sales in exercises equipped with a state concession whose allocation is not in the national territory Precise and stringent criteria, set by laws and regulations that the European Union and the European Court of Justice have recognized perfectly responsive to the needs for the protection of public health.
“We do not want to risk – he adds – the destructuring of the sector and the legal market in favor of the smuggling, with the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of jobs for demagogic initiatives without any technical and scientific foundation. We are not willing to make ourselves locked up in the Indian reserves waiting to extinct, because we are dealers of the state, rooted in the social fabric in which we also provide services of public interest, They contribute importantly to the collection of indirect taxes and to the garrison of a legal market of peculiar products. “Therefore – concludes Antonelli – we ask our government to strongly oppose these initiatives during the definition of the European position in view of the conference of the Geneva Parties, supporting a virtuous national supply chain, which has embarked on a path of innovation and sustainability”.
-The photo of IPA Agency –
(ITALPRESS).