CONFUSING NUMBERS ON THE SIN TAX BILL

It is odd that the ongoing photo finish toward the passage of a Sin Tax Bill that the Palace wants has become a race not as much fueled by prudence as by sheer statistics.  Odd in the sense that the figures presented by the bill's vocal advocates do vary quite wildly, one wonders where they are getting them from.  Worse, some figures nearly make some readers die laughing; I mean, readers who think a bit more than merely read the newspapers.

For example, Sen Miriam Defensor Santiago -- known for vowing once upon a time to speak the truth always lest she jumped from an airplane, only to curtly say "I lied" when found exaggerating -- reports that some 87,600 Filipinos die every year from ailments attributable to smoking (PDI,10/24/2012).  That is a whale of a difference from Health Secretary Enrique Ona's 50,000 annual deaths for the same reason (PDI, 9/24/2012).  Ona adds that of tobacco users in the Philippines, 17.5% are girls and 28.3% are boys, aged 13-15, meaning high school freshmen, sophomores and seniors.  I do not have the numbers to contest Ona on the latter, merely my plain common sense that seldom lies to me, anyway.  If one swallows Ona's numbers hook, like and sinker -- in turn indicating ten such students for every class of 20 boys and 20 girls are hooked to smoking --  then our teachers in the secondary schools must be sitting on their asses in molding the youth's morale in this respect. Then, we have more of an education than a health crisis in these parts!

Unfortunately lost in the hustle and bustle of this confusing numbers game is the plain truth that our local cigarette and wine industries, combined, are only averaging a gross revenue of P250 billion per year. This validates Sen. Edgardo Angara's estimation, during a recent television interview, that they  are more or less netting just about P12 billion per year.  And so, with the P40-45 billion in incremental sin taxes that Sen Franklin Drilon is proposing  -- down from the P60 billion the administration had originally wanted --  it no longer matters that the government is practically killing these twin industries, providing it is able to raise enough revenues to prevent next year's anticipated budget deficits.  The monumental irony is -- ask Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo -- none of our living past presidents will ever assert that in their respective times they had succeeded to balance their respective budgets through newer tax legislation.

But that which had nearly left me die laughing was the revelation of a doctor in his recent article in the Inquirer titled, "Rejoinder on the 'sin tax' bill."   He presented allegedly World Health Organization-sourced data indicating that every Filipino smoker consumes 1,073 sticks of cigarettes per year.  Alack, I did not know that a consumption of less than three sticks of cigarettes daily is already the highest smoking record in the region. Well, "numbers do not lie," the familiar slogan goes; and so, what more can I say?  But wait a minute.  Can't liars also use numbers?     .