A public health advocacy group on Monday urged lawmakers to implement tobacco tax on vapes and heated tobacco products.

HealthJustice Philippines also condemned plans by lawmakers to implement a moratorium on excise tax for tobacco products.

The group argued that suspending tax hikes on tobacco increases access to these harmful products, reduces funding for essential programs and ultimately undermines public health goals.

It also proposed that a more decisive action should be to apply the same tax rates to cigarettes, heated tobacco products, vapes and other novel tobacco products.

“A pause in raising tobacco taxes or a rollback in tax rates is a flawed and deceptive solution to address illicit tobacco trade,” said Dr. Jaime Galvez Tan, former Health Secretary and HealthJustice Board Member.

“An aggressive crackdown on importers, distributors, and retailers who engage in tobacco smuggling can best solve this,” he added.

Tan stressed that lawmakers “should realign their priorities towards public health, especially protecting the health of our youth.”

“We urge them to reject any plan of a moratorium on tobacco tax increase and, in turn, impose equal tax rates on heated tobacco products and vapes to protect the youth from accessing these deadly products,” Tan said.

“This way we can reduce the expenditure in treating the diseases brought by tobacco and vapes while potentially boosting government tax revenues that fund our Universal Health Care Law,” he added.

Last week, both the House of Representatives and the Senate held separate committee hearings to address the proliferation of the illicit trade of tobacco products.

House lawmakers said they were considering temporarily lifting the automatic 5 percent annual increase on tobacco excise tax until 2026 to stabilize tax revenues grossly minimized by smuggled tobacco products.

Meanwhile, tobacco industry representatives proposed the same initiative during the Senate hearing.

Dr. Esperanza Cabral, former Health secretary, stressed that proposing a moratorium on tobacco taxes “only protects the business interests and profits of big tobacco companies,” stressing that the health of Filipinos, especially children, “should be put first and foremost.”

“We strongly urge our lawmakers to resist attempts by the tobacco industry to hijack public health policies and have the moral imperative to defend our nation’s right to health,” Cabral said.

Enacted in 2012, the Sin Tax Law increased taxes on tobacco products, which remarkably reduced tobacco use among adult Filipinos from 29.7 percent in 2009 to 23.8 percent in 2015, and further dropped to 19.5 percent or 15 million adults in 2021.