They Started a Petition: Exorbitant Alcohol Tax Is a Lifestyle Intervention

The State Alcohol Policy Monitoring Platform, which began by criticizing the concrete result of alcohol policies in Turkey, turning Turkey into an illegal haven and imposing 2.5 times the tax on a product, attracted a lot of attention in Little time.

In the campaign statement, “70 raki, priced tax free at TL 114, sells for TL 408 with tax. Deaths due to high taxes and fake drinks are on the rise. “This is not an acceptable policy.”

4,000 SIGNATURES IN 24 HOURS

Even less than 24 hours after the campaign launched with a request for 5,000 signatures, the number of counter-signatures was close to 4,000. Affirming that they have been monitoring Turkey’s moonshine data, which is the tangible result of alcohol policies in Turkey, every day since December 2020, when it was established as the State Alcohol Policy Monitoring Platform, and He said: “Today, the amount of the tax is 258 percent of the duty-free price of a 70 cl bottle of raki with 45 degrees of alcohol. Citizens are required to pay 2.5 times the retail price of a bottle of raki as tax It is not acceptable to pay 408 TL including tax for a product with a tax free price of 114 TL.

ILLEGAL DRINK SHOWN ON THE BLACK MARKET

In the continuation of the statement, which claimed that Turkey’s alcohol policies were shown in the illegal alcohol black market, it included the following: “Indeed, exorbitant taxes on alcoholic beverages led to the deaths of 92 people in 2020, 102 people in 2021, and 38 people in 2022 from counterfeit alcohol poisoning. However, the exorbitant taxation of alcoholic beverages increases the demand for more harmful and illegal products. The most concrete examples of this are the use of fake alcohol and drugs. With the increase in taxes and restrictions on access to alcoholic beverages, the frequency of capture of both illegal products in operations is increasing.

THE NEW TIMES REVEALED IT ALL

Likewise, he affirmed that the tax increase carried out in the first days of 2023 resurfaced all the problems that it brought with it, and added: “Both the threats that the black market of illegal liquor represents to public health and public finances, as well as the impossibility of lifestyle practices of a part of the society due to exorbitant prices, Turkey points out that the tax collected from alcoholic beverages is nothing more than lifestyle intervention.Nowhere in the world is it acceptable that a licit practice of freedom is offered for sale at 2.5 times the price of it.Therefore, we stress the lifestyle intervention of the exorbitant tax on alcoholic beverages and present our demands in this way at the discretion of decision makers.

* The exorbitant SCT rate on alcoholic beverages should be reduced to a level not to exceed 100 percent of the product price.

* The practice of increasing the SCT rate for alcoholic beverages every 6 months must be abandoned by modifying or repealing the corresponding provision in the Special Consumption Tax Law No. 4760.

* Decision makers, including opposition political players, must end their silence against the higher than 250 percent tax rate on alcoholic beverages.

TURKEY IS LAST IN CONSUMPTION AND THIRD IN TAXES

Turkey’s problem of alcohol consumption and taxes was also detailed in the statement, and the following occurred:

“Turkey, like many European countries, taxes alcoholic beverages as a special consumer product and holds up European countries as examples of high taxes and access restrictions on alcoholic beverages. On the other hand, Turkey is in the last place in the consumption of alcoholic beverages and in the third place in the tax collected from alcoholic beverages in the European geography. In other words, the restrictions and interventions against alcoholic beverages in Turkey are disproportionate. The exorbitant tax on alcoholic beverages is outrageous in Turkey, which records much lower consumption figures than many European countries that supposedly apply the same restrictions as Turkey.”

The continuation of the statement is as follows: “According to data from the World Bank, the average annual consumption of pure alcohol per capita registered in the world in 2018 was 6.4 liters. The European Union average for the same data is 6.2 litres. Average turkey is only 2 liters. In Turkey, this figure is 2.4 liters in 2000. In other words, there has been no fundamental change in the last 18 years. In this way, Turkey’s application of the same restrictions as some other countries in the world means that alcohol policies in Turkey are only disproportionate in nature. If he is sick, take medicine and wait for him to recover. But if you are not sick and continue to take medicine, it will be much worse to be sick. Here, the alcohol policies implemented in Turkey aim to treat a disease that does not exist with medication. The result is a tragedy both in terms of public health and individual rights and freedoms.”