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Proposed tobacco and sugar tax stirs up controversy in the Northern Mariana Islands

by | Oct 25, 2022 | Northern Mariana Islands | 0 comments

In advance of the senate hearing a bill to raise taxes on tobacco products and sugary drinks, prominent politicians have voiced strong opposition to the proposal. Among them is Senator King-Nabors (R), who argued that the bill would hit the islands’ poor the hardest. He criticized what he saw as the folly of reducing a “holistic problem” in the commonwealth’s health down to simply sugar and tobacco.

The bill directs proceeds from the tax to health initiatives, but King-Nabors believes that they will be insufficient to make any significant progress on overall health, and will ultimately lead to worse outcomes by making the most poor even more so.

Critics of the bill have also suggested that it would not change the overall consumption of unhealthy products but simply change the market proportions for them. For example, the black market for cigarettes, they say, would increase, and consumers would buy less soda and more beer. What’s more, impoverished citizens spend a greater percentage of their income on the taxed products, and the tax is regressive, hurting them the most. 

King-Nabors was joined in his opposition by Efraim Atalig, the mayor of Rota, the commonwealth’s southernmost island. Atalig echoed King-Nabors’ concerns about the tax hurting the poor and suggested that a better source for funding would be a tax on remittances since “those are funds that exit the CNMI.”

The tax was proposed by Representative Christina Sablan (D), but as of now, neither she nor any other proponent of the bill has spoken in support of it publicly. At the present, the opponents of the tax dominate the conversation.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kabir Buch

Kabir Buch

Kabir Buch is a senior at the Harker School in California. He’s passionate about constitutional law and political science, and worked on a lawsuit protecting free speech rights on social media (Cool World v. Twitter). He's deeply interested in global affairs and is a captain of his school's debate team. In his free time, he loves hiking, strolling through his neighborhood, and reading fantasy novels. At Pasquines, he's the Northern Mariana Islands Affairs Intern Editor.

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