Szklo André Salem, Iglesias Roberto Magno
Instituto Nacional de Câncer José Alencar Gomes da Silva, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.
Centro de Estudos de Integração e Desenvolvimento, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.
Cad Saude Publica. 2020 Dec 18;36(12):e00175420. doi: 10.1590/0102-311X00175420. eCollection 2020.
The tobacco industry normally overestimates the illegal market's size in order to reinforce the idea of its direct relationship to the choice to increase taxes by the internal revenue administration. In Brazil, the last increase in taxes on tobacco products was in 2016. The growth of demand for illegal cigarettes has other macrosocial determinants that the industry does not take into account, such as the increase in the economic capacity to purchase legal cigarettes. The article aims to test the hypothesis of the "Brazilian consumer's economic reason" from 2015 to 2019 by comparing the estimated consumptions of illegal cigarettes, based on official government data on legal production and cigarette consumption with an "extraofficial estimate" furnished by the industry. The study also used official national data on monthly income from work. The Brazilian population's "purchasing capacity for legal cigarettes" increased systematically from 2016 to 2019, from 412 packs/month to 460 packs/month. The absolute difference between the estimate by the tobacco industry and the estimate based on official data on the volume of illegal cigarettes that were consumed increased over time, reaching +30.2 billion units in 2019. Meanwhile, legal cigarette consumption, calculated with official data, increased from 2016 through 2019 (+7.8 billion), while the industry estimated a reduction in this consumption (-9.5 billion). Policymakers should seek to base their decisions on estimates generated from official data sources, including macroeconomic data on employment and income, rather than to use estimates produced by the tobacco industry that aim to interfere in public policies.
烟草行业通常会高估非法市场的规模，以强化其与国内税收管理部门提高税收选择之间的直接关系这一观点。在巴西，上一次提高烟草产品税是在2016年。非法香烟需求的增长还有其他烟草行业未考虑到的宏观社会决定因素，比如购买合法香烟经济能力的提升。本文旨在通过比较基于政府官方合法生产和香烟消费数据估算的非法香烟消费量与烟草行业提供的“非官方估算”，来检验2015年至2019年“巴西消费者经济原因”这一假设。该研究还使用了官方国家月工作收入数据。从2016年到2019年，巴西人口“购买合法香烟的能力”系统性提高，从每月412包增至每月460包。随着时间推移，烟草行业的估算与基于非法香烟消费数量官方数据的估算之间的绝对差值不断增大，2019年达到+302亿支。与此同时，根据官方数据计算，合法香烟消费从2016年到2019年有所增加（+78亿支），而烟草行业却估算这一消费量有所减少（-95亿支）。政策制定者应寻求依据包括就业和收入宏观经济数据在内的官方数据来源所产生的估算来做出决策，而非使用旨在干预公共政策的烟草行业估算数据。
