There was a girl. As she had awful face, she had never been in a relationship. Although she was more kindhearted than anyone, men wouldn’t touch her with a 10-foot pole. She thought if a woman couldn’t get man’s love, a woman’s life isn’t worth living. So she committed suicide leaving the last words ‘I want to kiss all of man in next life’. After her death some grass sprouted at her grave. That grass was a tobacco leaf.
Did she accomplish her wish? According to statistics, there are 1.3 billion smokers in the world. Also, according to OECD’s research, Korea’s smoking rate is 44.3% and ranks second in the OECD. Besides Korea’s average price of cigar is 2500won. That is cheapest price in the OECD.
Someone said that if the cigarette price raised, we could expect the smoking rate to lower, as well as earn more in taxes. But how can the rise of cigarette price help increase the nonsmoking rate? Cigarette is one of the most toxic things. So if a smoker couldn’t smoke because of price, then the illegal circulation or low price Chinese cigarettes will be more wide spread. Actually in Greece and the USA after rising cigar-price, the traffic in cigarettes increased.
It was an instance of the biter getting bitten. Also, there are some guesses in to the background of increasing cigarette price. One of guesses is that the government wants to help KT&G Corp’s business performance and health insurance’s financial worsening. This part causes a controversy.
Korea’s smoking rate is increasing. But Government tries to solve the problem just by rising the price of cigarette. That is a half measure that doesn’t fix the main causes of the situation. If the price of cigarettes has to increase in any case, gradual increasing is better than radical. In addition the government has to prepare various measures to reduce the smoking rate. For example, In Australia Cigar Corps have to add awful picture in cigarette case to make people aware of the dangers of smoking. The rising of cigarette prices should come after preparing realistic solutions.