The Australian government said on Thursday that the release is available cigarette brands on the market was an act of desperation coming from the British American Tobacco Australia (BATA), which recently launched a new brand, which sells for only $ 11.50.
According to Health Minister Tatyana Plibersek, when BATA decided to introduce “Just Smokes for a very cheap price, the company is actually exposed his sole purpose of cashing in on the vulnerability of young smokers, who naturally favor of less expensive brands of cigarettes.
In a statement released today by the Ministry of Health, Ms Plibersek said that almost everyone knows that “young people are the most price-sensitive smokers all.”
“And they fall in the prices of British American Tobacco seems to be directly aimed at vulnerable young people.” Health Minister lamented.
While a pack of cigarettes typically sells for $ 16, BATA is configured to only sell the smokes well below the price range of its competitors in order to survive in what is known as the dictates of a competitive market.
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The emergence of cheap, but the legitimate brands are a natural market response to the introduction in 2010, 25 percent of the tobacco excise tax, BATA Representative Scott McIntyre said in a statement today.
Since the tax was introduced, BATA said cheaper segment of the market saw a bush up to 63 percent, which still does not include the spread of fakes that smokers may be purchased for less than $ 10.
To avoid additional costs, Australian smokers will switch to more affordable products, which Mr. McIntyre said it is a new trend that BATA can not ignore.
“The tobacco industry is extremely competitive, so if you continue to ask smokers to smoke less expensive retailers, that’s where the industry will fight for market share that has the potential for prices to fall further,” said a spokesman for BATA.
“Our customers were to trade for cheaper products or illegal cigarettes so we were forced to compete,” Mr. McIntyre added.
He also warned that this trend will only business is booming, “if the government continues to give us a special excise tax increases, as it did in the past, all they do is make the problem worse.”
The manifestation of this problem, he hinted, it is possible spikes in the number of Australian smokers of cigarettes less accessible to the public.
“One would think (this case), if the prices keep getting cheaper and cheaper, and there is huge growth in this area,” Mr. McIntyre has admitted in an interview with ABC.
Meanwhile, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) has expressed serious concern that the intervention of the excise tax coming from the federal government seems to create the opposite effect on the market – the tobacco companies to resort to cheaper products, which attract the patronage of smokers.
AMA president Steve Hambleton said the Herald Sun, the price may well influence the decision of smokers to light a stick or not, but he acknowledged that, when the opposite is happening, then the government should be very worried.
But Ms Plibersek seems unmoved by the techniques being employed by manufacturers of tobacco, as she told the ABC that the government intends to “continue to look at what we have to do to continue to reduce the rate of people smoke in Australia.”