Consumption increased
Traditional tobacco products, such as cheroots, remain popular in Myanmar.
The number of cigarettes smoked in Sri Lanka increased by 6.4 percent between 2014 and 2016, according to a story in the Daily News quoting the executive director of Verite Research, Dr. Nishan De Mel.
Addressing a press conference held at the Government Information Department Auditorium in Colombo on Thursday, he said that 3,560 million cigarettes were smoked in the country during 2014, and that this figure had risen to 3,960 million in 2015 and to 3,790 million in 2016.
It was suggested that smoking should be reduced by 25 percent and that this decrease should be brought about at least in part by increasing taxation.
Meanwhile, the executive director of the Alcohol and Drug Information Center, Pubudu Sumanasekara, said that people did not switch to beedis after an increase in the price of cigarettes, as was stated in media reports.
This was because there were cheap cigarettes in the market.
It was very difficult to make the Finance Ministry and the financial section of the media understand the truth about the tobacco industry, he said.