Iranians Smoke 55 Billion Cigarettes Annually

A senior official from the Tobacco Supervision Center reported that Iran’s annual consumption of 55 billion cigarettes includes six billion cigarettes smuggled into the country. This figure represents a 50 percent decline compared to two years ago.

According to Wednesday, July 12 report by IRNA news agency, Ali-Asghar Ramzi, head of the Center for Planning and Supervision of Tobacco Products, announced this during a specialized workshop on combating tobacco product smuggling in Mashhad.

He stated that the value of the six billion smuggled cigarettes entering the country is nearly 30 trillion rials.

Ramzi also said that although cigarette smuggling has shown a “downward trend,” this level of tobacco smuggling has caused “damage” to the “budget, economy, and domestic manufacturers.”

The official characterized smuggled cigarettes as lacking “health warning messages,” “highly harmful to health,” and “mostly counterfeit.”

The director general of the economic affairs division of the Central Headquarters for Fighting Goods and Currency Smuggling also announced during the workshop’s opening ceremony that the annual seizure of smuggled cigarettes in 2016 was “one billion 740 million cigarettes.”

Amirmohammad Porhamfar, noting that the “tip of the tobacco smuggling iceberg is more visible” and efforts to combat it have not been “particularly worthy of pride and boasting,” stated that this figure was only 240 million cigarettes in 2013.

According to him, the reason for the decline in smuggling over the past two years was “increased domestic production,” “such that in 2014 estimated cigarette smuggling into the country was 12.5 billion cigarettes, which reached six billion cigarettes in 2016.”

Porhamfar also confirmed the figure of 55 billion cigarettes annual consumption in Iran and added that this consumption level imposes “100 trillion rials” in costs to the country.

He stated that two to three times this figure, namely 200 to 300 trillion rials, represents the treatment costs resulting from tobacco consumption.

The director general of the economic affairs division of the Central Headquarters for Fighting Goods and Currency Smuggling also warned that without necessary planning and prevention to control tobacco consumption, “Iran, along with Egypt and Pakistan, will have the highest consumption relative to population in the world over the next 40 years.”

Previously, a Health Ministry official had stated that Iran ranks only ahead of Afghanistan in the region regarding tobacco taxation, and cigarette tax in the country should be increased sevenfold.

Khosrow Sadeghniyt, head of the Environmental and Occupational Health Center of the Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education, added that the Health Ministry had proposed to parliament that a 25 percent tax on tobacco products be approved at the retail supply level, which parliament rejected.

Currently, in Iran, approximately seven million 700 thousand people are consumers of various tobacco products, and four percent of all deaths above age 30 are attributed to tobacco consumption.

Based on survey results released partly last year, alcohol is the second most consumed substance in Iran after cigarettes.

Waterpipe and other substance consumption also rank in the subsequent positions in this classification, but figures and statistics on them have not been published.

Source: Radio Farda