Australia aims to reduce rates of daily smoking to 5% or less by 2030. By 2023, we got down to 8.3%.
A key tool to encourage smokers to quit has been to raise the tobacco taxes. Now a pack of 20 cigarettes costs over A$40, with the excise making up around 70% of the price.
Meanwhile, illegal cigarettes have flooded the market, often costing $20 or less a pack. People who wouldn’t normally break the law are now buying cheap, illicit tobacco.
Critics of the current tobacco excise argue the tax has stopped working to further reduce smoking rates and should be lowered. But what would this mean for illicit tobacco consumption?
We asked five experts: could making tobacco cheaper actually cut down smoking rates?
Five out of five said no. Here are their detailed responses.
Becky Freeman is an unpaid expert advisor to the Cancer Council tobacco issues committee and a member of the Cancer Institute vaping communications advisory panel. She has received relevant competitive grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Medical Research Future Fund, NSW Health, the Ian Potter Foundation, VicHealth, and Healthway WA; consulting fees from the World Health Organization, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Department of Health, the United States Food and Drug Administration, the NHMRC e-cigarette working committee, NSW Health, and Cancer Council; and travel expenses from the Oceania Tobacco Control Conference and the Australia Public Health Association preventive health conference.
Coral Gartner receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, and Australian Institute of Criminology. She has been engaged as an expert for the Australian government in litigation. She is a member of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and the Public Health Association of Australia and is the Chair of the Editorial Advisory Board for the BMJ Journal, Tobacco Control. She is a member of Project Sunset, which is a non-profit network of tobacco control researchers and advocates who support phasing out the general retailing of commercial tobacco products.
Roger Magnusson previously received research funding from the Australian Research Council.
Ron Borland receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the United States' National Institute for Health.
Fei Gao does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
