Lawmakers across party lines yesterday urged health authorities to reconsider their plan to impose a “health surcharge” on alcoholic beverages, suggesting that the issue be more carefully researched and debated.
On Thursday, Director-General of the Department of Health’s (DOH) Bureau of Health Promotion Chiou Shu-ti (邱淑媞) said that the DOH plans to propose a draft act on the prevention of alcohol risks next month.
The proposal would levy a 40 percent health surcharge on alcoholic beverages in addition to excise taxes already imposed, she said.
Before the bill would take effect, it would have to be approved by the Legislative Yuan, and many lawmakers have said its chances of passage were slim if the “surcharge” clause was not changed or eliminated.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus secretary-general Lin Hung-chih (林鴻池) said that because there were many different opinions on the impact of alcoholic drinks, he felt it was necessary for people from all walks of life to discuss the issue and produce a consensus.
The government has argued that the proposed “alcohol surcharge” is similar to the NT$10 health surcharge added to each pack of cigarettes in 2001. The tobacco surcharge was later doubled to NT$20 last year.
However, both Lin and Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) argued that unlike tobacco products, alcoholic beverages are not necessarily harmful to human health. Some scientific reports even suggest moderate drinking can be a healthy habit, they said.
“Alcohol is not inevitably harmful,” Huang said.
She said that if the DOH intends to use the surcharge as a strategy to curb alcohol abuse, it should first study what beverages alcoholics consume and impose the proposed surcharge only on those beverages.
KMT Legislator Chiang Lin-chun (江玲君), who initiated her own version of the draft alcohol hazard prevention act, also spelled out her opposition to the DOH’s plan to include the alcohol surcharge in the draft bill.
“There should be a national consensus on the issue,” Chiang said, warning that otherwise there would be too much opposition against the bill to push it through.
Meanwhile, the state-run Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp (TTL) described the alcohol surcharge plan as “absurd” and “unreasonable,” contending that no other country in the world requires consumers to pay a health surcharge on alcohol.
“Of course excessive drinking is not good, but it is also bad to eat other foods excessively, such as instant noodles, salt and sugar. Should we levy a health surcharge on those products?” TTL senior vice president Lin Tzann-feng (林讚峰) asked.
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