Most sold brand of cigarettes – taxes as a % of price – ad valorem excise by country – data from quandl
October 3rd, 2014
Country Level Units As Of Country Page Afghanistan 0.00 % of price 2010 Albania 0.00 % of price 2010 Algeria 0.00 % of price 2010 Angola 16.00 % of price 2008 Antigua and Barbuda 0.00 % of price 2010 Argentina 69.00 % of price 2010 Armenia 0.00 % of price 2010 Australia 0.00 % of price 2010 Austria 43.00 % of price 2010 Azerbaijan 9.00 % of price 2010 Bahrain 0.00 % of price 2010 Bangladesh 53.00 % of price 2010 Barbados 0.00 % of price 2010 Belarus 0.00 % of price 2010 Belgium 52.00 % of price 2010 Belize 0.00 % of price 2010 Benin 25.00 % of price 2010 Bolivia 29.00 % of price 2010 Bosnia and Herzegovina 42.00 % of price 2010 Botswana 0.00 % of price 2010 Brazil 0.00 % of price 2010 Brunei 0.00 % of price 2010 Bulgaria 23.00 % of price 2010 Burkina Faso 7.00 % of price 2010 Burundi 36.00 % of price 2010 Cambodia 11.00 % of price 2010 Cameroon 9.00 % of price 2010 Canada 0.00 % of price 2010 Cape Verde 5.00 % of price 2010 Central African Republic 13.00 % of price 2010 Chad 13.00 % of price 2010 Chile 60.00 % of price 2010 China 25.00 % of price 2010 Colombia 10.00 % of price 2010 Comoros 54.00 % of price 2010 Congo 15.00 % of price 2010 Congo Brazzaville 16.00 % of price 2010 Costa Rica 44.00 % of price 2010 Croatia 33.00 % of price 2010 Cuba 0.00 % of price 2008 Cyprus 44.00 % of price 2010 Czech Republic 28.00 % of price 2010 Denmark 21.00 % of price 2010 Djibouti 31.00 % of price 2010 Dominica 0.00 % of price 2010 Dominican Republic 17.00 % of price 2010 Ecuador 54.00 % of price 2010 Egypt 40.00 % of price 2010 El Salvador 18.00 % of price 2010 Equatorial Guinea 19.00 % of price 2008 Eritrea 45.00 % of price 2010 Estonia 33.00 % of price 2010 Ethiopia 43.00 % of price 2010 Fiji 0.00 % of price 2008 Finland 52.00 % of price 2010 France 58.00 % of price 2010 Gabon 7.00 % of price 2010 Gambia 0.00 % of price 2010 Georgia 0.00 % of price 2010 Germany 25.00 % of price 2010 Ghana 14.00 % of price 2010 Greece 58.00 % of price 2010 Grenada 34.00 % of price 2010 Guatemala 46.00 % of price 2010 Guinea 11.00 % of price 2010 Guinea Bissau 16.00 % of price 2010 Guyana 16.00 % of price 2010 Honduras 0.00 % of price 2010 Hungary 28.00 % of price 2010 Iceland 0.00 % of price 2010 India 0.00 % of price 2010 Indonesia 0.00 % of price 2010 Iran 0.00 % of price 2010 Iraq 0.00 % of price 2010 Ireland 18.00 % of price 2010 Israel 48.00 % of price 2010 Italy 55.00 % of price 2010 Ivory Coast 21.00 % of price 2010 Jamaica 0.00 % of price 2010 Japan 0.00 % of price 2010 Jordan 44.00 % of price 2010 Kazakhstan 0.00 % of price 2010 Kenya 0.00 % of price 2010 Kiribati 0.00 % of price 2010 Kuwait 0.00 % of price 2010 Kyrgyzstan 0.00 % of price 2010 Laos 18.00 % of price 2010 Latvia 34.00 % of price 2010 Lebanon 37.00 % of price 2010 Lesotho 0.00 % of price 2010 Liberia 7.00 % of price 2010 Libya 2.00 % of price 2010 Lithuania 25.00 % of price 2010 Luxembourg 48.00 % of price 2010 Macedonia 35.00 % of price 2010 Madagascar 60.00 % of price 2010 Malawi 0.00 % of price 2008 Malaysia 10.00 % of price 2010 Maldives 0.00 % of price 2010 Mali 6.00 % of price 2010 Malta 50.00 % of price 2010 Mauritania 0.00 % of price 2010 Mauritius 0.00 % of price 2010 Mexico 46.00 % of price 2010 Moldova 12.00 % of price 2010 Mongolia 0.00 % of price 2010 Montenegro 35.00 % of price 2010 Morocco 50.00 % of price 2008 Mozambique 30.00 % of price 2010 Myanmar 50.00 % of price 2010 Namibia 0.00 % of price 2010 Nepal 0.00 % of price 2010 Netherlands 21.00 % of price 2010 New Zealand 0.00 % of price 2010 Nicaragua 0.00 % of price 2010 Niger 10.00 % of price 2010 Nigeria 16.00 % of price 2010 Norway 0.00 % of price 2010 Oman 0.00 % of price 2010 Pakistan 11.00 % of price 2010 Panama 42.00 % of price 2010 Papua New Guinea 0.00 % of price 2008 Paraguay 7.00 % of price 2010 Peru 0.00 % of price 2010 Philippines 0.00 % of price 2010 Poland 31.00 % of price 2010 Portugal 23.00 % of price 2010 Qatar 0.00 % of price 2010 Romania 22.00 % of price 2010 Russia 6.00 % of price 2010 Rwanda 51.00 % of price 2010 Saint Kitts and Nevis 5.00 % of price 2010 Saint Lucia 0.00 % of price 2010 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 0.00 % of price 2010 Samoa 0.00 % of price 2010 San Marino 74.00 % of price 2010 Sao Tome and Principe 9.00 % of price 2010 Saudi Arabia 0.00 % of price 2010 Senegal 26.00 % of price 2010 Serbia 35.00 % of price 2010 Seychelles 0.00 % of price 2010 Sierra Leone 18.00 % of price 2010 Singapore 0.00 % of price 2010 Slovak Republic 24.00 % of price 2010 Slovenia 44.00 % of price 2010 Somalia 0.00 % of price 2010 South Africa 0.00 % of price 2010 South Korea 0.00 % of price 2010 Spain 57.00 % of price 2010 Sri Lanka 0.00 % of price 2010 Sudan 59.00 % of price 2010 Suriname 0.00 % of price 2010 Swaziland 0.00 % of price 2010 Sweden 39.00 % of price 2010 Switzerland 25.00 % of price 2010 Syria 15.00 % of price 2010 Tajikistan 0.00 % of price 2010 Tanzania 0.00 % of price 2010 Thailand 60.00 % of price 2010 The Bahamas 31.00 % of price 2010 Togo 15.00 % of price 2010 Tonga 0.00 % of price 2010 Trinidad and Tobago 0.00 % of price 2010 Tunisia 47.00 % of price 2010 Turkey 63.00 % of price 2010 Turkmenistan 17.00 % of price 2010 Tuvalu 14.00 % of price 2010 UAE 0.00 % of price 2010 Uganda 0.00 % of price 2010 UK 24.00 % of price 2010 Ukraine 21.00 % of price 2010 Uruguay 0.00 % of price 2010 USA 0.00 % of price 2010 Uzbekistan 0.00 % of price 2010 Vanuatu 0.00 % of price 2010 Venezuela 68.00 % of price 2010 Vietnam 32.00 % of price 2010 Yemen 47.00 % of price 2010 Zambia 31.00 % of price 2010 Zimbabwe 39.00 % of price 2010
List of all added chemicals to cigarettes : drugs
E-cigarettes aren’t encouraging people to take up smoking
I used to work for an international tobacco processing facility. Half of the chemicals you see here that appear to be “harmful” are actually found in the acetate filter, the ink (branding), the packet, and in trace quantities due to the treatment/dyeing/recycling of the paper/hemp sheath. Some occur in the tobacco plant naturally, it' s just that we primarily want the nicotine. In a normal unflavoured cigarette, the only “chemical” added to the tobacco is H2O.
The Tobacco is harvested and dried on site, (on the farm in Virginia, Columbia, India wherever). Tobacco is like Tea, each plant grown in a different area with different nutrients produces a different taste. The tobacco is separated into leaf and stem. (leaves and sticks). The leaf is the premium product, the stem is the cheap filler.
Each brand of cigarette has a different blend of tobacco, both the mix of regional tobacco' s and the mix of leaf/stem/recycled tobacco dust. The different combinations of these makes a particular brand, this is why different brands have different strengths and tastes.
The tobacco leaf gets unloaded from the stores and is almost perfectly dry and very brittle, therefore dusty. It gets loaded onto conveyors in its large dry form and sliced into large chunks by hydraulic knives. These chunks fall into conditioning cylinders, (imagine these as large soda cans rotating on their sides) the conditioning cylinders have paddles and vanes inside to break up the tobacco and steam jets to add lots of moisture.
If it is a “flavoured” brand, it is at this point that a flavour mix is added to the tanks and sprayed on with the steam. This flavour mix is up to the same standard as the food industry and is perfectly edible, it is highly concentrated. (You' d be surprised how much maple syrup is exported/imported just for this purpose).
The Sticks are loaded onto separate lines and passed into a high pressure steam system. The sticks are pressurised with high pressure steam in a cylinder, the steam and sticks are allowed to escape through a nozzle, the steam expands as it goes through this nozzle and reaches atmospheric pressure. Because the tobacco is also ' pressurised' and infused with this steam, the tobacco explosively expands at this point also. Think of it like the “dive bell” episode of Mythbusters. This process expands the stem so less is used to fill a cigarette or packet.
The tobacco is then left for a minimum of 4 hours to ' settle' before further processing. It' s now conveyed to a series of blending silos where the amounts of each type are weighed and measured for different blends. It is processed by high speed rotational cutters that shred it into slices of no more than 1/16th of an inch.
The moisture of the tobacco is monitored closely. Too wet and you' ll get dirty brown spots on your paper, too dry and when you light it, instead of embers, you' ll get something akin to a candle flame. This process produces lots of tobacco dust, this dust is saved and recycled. It is wet and pressed into sheets and re used in the product, very little is wasted.
The filters are made using bails of acetate, this is drawn into machines that shape, cut and wrap it in ' cork paper' (or a brand/pattern). Everything is then drawn using compressed air to production machines that wrap it all in paper, cut it to size, stick it into a packet, and wrap it for delivery.
Because this product goes into the mouth it' s classed as a food, and has the same rigid standards that the food industry should adhere to. At no point does anyone add anything other than water to the tobacco plant, with the exception of flavours, which are a higher standard than the stuff you can buy at the supermarket. This is because it makes them money and they can afford it. I can assure you that they have a very well paid staff of chemists and doctors who' s job it is to find and report on this stuff. It' s all sampled & tested. Any supplier that uses any product on the plant is essentially ' blacklisted' , they won' t be bought from again.
TLDR flavourings and water added to tobacco. Nothing else.
Edit for Grammar/Spelling/Mythbusters link.
Edit #2 Thank you kind stranger for the gold, I' d like you to realise that you' re paying me for participating in potentially/maybe/probably slowly killing a few generations slightly earlier than normal.
Edit #3 Front page thingy!! Also an afterthought, through honesty and transparency I' ve almost single handedly turned an anti smoking page into an advertisement for tobacco products, It' s a shame they aren' t allowed to advertise anymore, perhaps then they could pay me. wink wink/carton of a premium brand.
Edit #4. Clarification/Personal opinion… The factories and processes I have described above are within the EU, the are not U.S. Factories. I haven' t seen a U.S. factory, I didn' t want to directly address it, as I would be in the same ' boat' as most of you, “an internet laymen”, who' s sifting through the propaganda and misinformation to find the nuggets of fact. There are links provided by concerned people below that explain different processes. If you' re interested I would highly recommend learning about them.
The world/planet we currently exist on does not contain ' America then everybody else' . There' s a whole world out there, full of people who think a little bit differently. I apologise for giving you the impression that “this” is representative of the whole industry. I was trying to give a balanced inside viewpoint of a process I was familiar with.
If it were not for laws directly prohibiting it, there would be several campaigns and explanations by the tobacco companies themselves, but essentially some ' do gooder' somewhere decided that because they didn' t want to do a thing, you couldn' t either. They went a little further and by introducing a ' marketing ban' have stopped these companies from showing transparency within their production facilities, by labeling it advertising, that' s why all this look like it was filmed in the 70' s and edited using archive footage. I am able to tell you what I experienced because I don' t work for them. At this moment in time, (and the past 8 or so years) I haven' t even been remotely associated with them.
I won' t be able to roam /r/conspiracy with impunity anymore, by my own admission, I have experience in an industry and am on the verge of ' shill' territory with regards to a bias I may or may not (probably do) have. This is the price I pay for honesty. No wonder people who tell the truth aren' t elected into politics. No one wants to hear an actual first hand account of something they might not know, or have misconceptions about.
This post was originally a marginal side line post in /r/Drugs. A community I' ve come to respect due to the oversight of medical professionals, the experiences of users/grower/manufacturers of drugs, and the vast array of corresponding anecdotal testimonies of users, I didn' t intend for ' Reddit front page' , I was just trying to inform people that it is a lot more like “this” than it is “this”