First published on ABC News on 17 December 2021: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-17/could-australia-introduce-a-smoking-ban/100703600
Last week New Zealand announced its goal to be smoke-free by 2025, and now there are calls for Australia to follow their lead and start the phasing out of cigarettes in retail outlets across the country.
Key points:
- New Zealand will now prevent Kiwis born from 2011 onward from buying tobacco as part of its Smokefree 2025 goal
- Retailers are worried that a ban on cigarettes in Australia would see a spike in black market sales
- According to a 2019 KPMG report, illicit tobacco consumption increased by 6.6 percentage points to 20.7 per cent of total consumption
As part of its Smokefree 2025 plan, New Zealand will prevent Kiwis born from 2011 onward from ever buying tobacco.
The new legal smoking age will increase every year, thereby making it illegal for future generations to be able to buy tobacco products.
Other measures announced by New Zealand include reducing the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to minimal levels, and reducing the availability of tobacco in retail outlets
An article recently published by The Medical Journal of Australia is calling on the federal government to start supporting Australian retailers in the transition to a smoke-free society.
One of the authors of the article is Associate Professor Coral Gartner at the School of Public Health at The University of Queensland.
"Australia is now going in the same direction, albeit a little bit slower than New Zealand," Dr Gartner said.
"The national preventative health strategy is going to be released soon and that is going to have a goal of getting smoking down to less than 5 per cent in Australia by 2030."
Dr Gartner said an option was to make cigarettes only available in pharmacies.
"There are a lot of things that we can do to help support people who are trying to quit smoking," she said.
"One of these policies is reducing the number of places where you purchase tobacco.
"By taking it out of general retail and putting it into specialised outlets, smokers would be provided with access to other products that they could use to help quitting."
CEO of the Australasian Association of Convenience Stores (AACS) Theo Foukkare said if the policy was rolled out in Australia it would be devastating for his members.
"We represent about 7,000 retailers, and tobacco accounts for about 40 per cent of our total sales and delivers about 25 per cent of the stores' profits," he said.
"One in 10 customers buys cigarettes in our members' stores.
"If tobacco was removed, a large number of our members would have to close their doors."
Instead, Mr Foukkare believed tobacco should be replaced with vaping products in stores.
"About 12 months ago as part of the NZ health strategy, they legalised accessibility to nicotine vaping as a smoking cessation tool," he said.
He believed vaping products were less harmful to smokers, although researchers have found vaping is harmful.
Concerns about the 'black market'
Last week the right-wing ACT New Zealand party criticised the new legislation, saying "prohibition has never worked".
"We will end up with a black market for tobacco, with no standards or regulation, and people will be harmed," spokeswoman Karen Chhour said.
The sentiment is something that Mr Foukkare agreed with saying that the banning of cigarettes in Australian stores would drive the black market.
"We have the most expensive cigarettes in the world, so consumers have moved to the black market," Mr Foukkare said.
"Consumers are now buying contraband from overseas and those packets are going for half the price of legal cigarettes."
According to a 2019 KPMG report, while legal tobacco consumption decreased, illicit tobacco consumption increased by 6.6 percentage points to 20.7 per cent of total consumption in 2019.
Mr Foukkare said another part of the problem was consumers buying vaping products online.
"We are allowing Australians to spend their money overseas rather than keeping their money in Australia," he said.
"We need to adopt the right strategies and the correct regulations and place control over who can import these products.
"When you have a model like that, you are giving consumers the choice to access products while keeping the money in Australia and keeping retailers open and we support giving consumers choice."
