The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has washed its hands of the price increases by saying that they are not essential products.

Indeed, tobacco and alcoholic products are as non-essential as it gets. While considered luxury products, they can also be health hazards, and one reason for the increase in sin taxes is to prevent young people from picking up the smoking as well as the drinking habit.

Realistically, however, tobacco and alcohol products are major industries which provide employment to hundreds of thousands of Filipinos. This figure goes up to the millions when downstream businesses like groceries, sari-sari stores, and sidewalk and ambulant vendors are included.

At the point of purchase, cigarettes and alcoholic beverages would have gone through several manufacturing, storage and distribution layers just before the consumer hands over his money in exchange for the products. And here is where today’s problem lies.

The products being sold today were manufactured long before the sin tax bill became law. Any increase, therefore, smacks of profiteering and it is the end user who pays the unfair price.

Opponents of the sin tax bill stated beforehand that one of their biggest fears was the expected flooding of the market with imported sin products, mostly from China and which would certainly be cheaper than the homegrown ones.

Rampant smuggling is another issue that must be faced, as there will always be parties willing to do anything to skirt the law and evade taxes.