Shut duty-free tobacco shops

It makes sense to increase the tobacco tax, eliminate duty-free tobacco shops at the airport and the mainland border, and remove the duty-free allowance on tobacco for travellers.

Why are we using government property at the airport to push tax-free drugs that kill our people? We should raise taxes, using the money for marketing campaigns to get children not to start and smokers to quit. If we double the tax, and halve the number of smokers, we still get the same income.

Tax money should not be spent on further 'research'. Tobacco smoke kills and pollutes. We should spend only on advertising to counter the tobacco industry's advertising, which lies to children and tries to stop smokers from quitting or smoking less.

As for the propaganda, spouted even by the financial secretary, that increasing tobacco taxes causes smuggling, this is, of course, rubbish. Smuggling happens because we do not require a stamp of the date and origin on each stick of tobacco, and the fact that the industry produces many more cigarettes than it sells legally.

Smuggling is done by the tobacco manufacturers themselves, as has been proven with many cases in Europe, Asia and Canada. Philip Morris is still dragging its feet on the legal settlement it made with the European Union to stop making and shipping more tobacco than it sells legally.

With tobacco stamped with date and origin, we can trace the supply chain from the nicotine pusher's factory right to your nicotine-stained teeth. We can then go back up the chain if duty is not paid, and prosecute every participant. That is how you eliminate smuggling.

All societies use recreational drugs of some sort. But the healthy ones keep an eye on every drug, knowing exactly where it came from and where it went.