If you are one of the three million plus smokers in Australia you probably want to quit. Smoking stinks, it is bad for your health and it is frightfully expensive.
It’s also addictive which is why so many struggle to kick the habit.
Governments too are addicted to smoking. They love the billions in revenue it brings in every year and never waste an opportunity to hike tobacco taxes. That’s resulted in a pack of cigarettes costing an average of $40 .
Health officials will say that high prices put people off of smoking and claim these punitive taxes are actually health measure. However recent government surveys show little change in smoking rates in recent years
But there has been a shift toward illegal tobacco products which now account for an estimated 20% of the market. That’s been a free kick for organised criminals who now see tobacco as more lucrative than traditional illicit products.
In countries like the UK and NZ, governments have taken a different approach and have been helping smokers quit through the use of safer nicotine delivery products. It’s no longer just patches and gum, they have also embraced e-cigarette products like vaping .
Now let me be clear, vaping isn’t a health product but it is recognised as being 95% less harmful than smoking and in England it helps 70,000 smokers quit every year.
It could do the same in Australia, except you cannot legally purchase vaping products here. It used to be a grey area where you could import the stuff yourself but this week the government has shut that down too.
That has effectively denied Australian smokers access to a less dangerous alternative of getting their nicotine fix which also helps many to actually quit.
It’s as if smokers health is less important than the revenue that smoking taxes brings in.
The political left love to dress up almost everything as some sort of moral stance, well here is one they can truly get behind.
Denying smokers a less harmful alternative that has proven to help hundreds of thousands end their slavery to tobacco is frankly immoral.
Health bureaucrats should be giving smokers more options to protect they health but instead they are making it harder for smokers to quit.
Cory Bernardi is the author of seven books and has been a member of the Australian rowing team, a publican, an investment portfolio manager and spent nearly 14 years as an Australian Senator.
Australia is being let down by a government that doesn't know what to do or how to do it. The pressure of underperformance is starting to show and we are all paying the price.
The Prime Minister has a delicate balancing act ahead of him. He needs to muscle up to China while re-establishing important trade markets for our products.
