Originally posted by The University of Queensland, Faculty of Medicine on 6 September 2024: https://medicine.uq.edu.au/article/2024/09/saving-money-or-spending-more-cost-minimising-strategies-purchase-tobacco-hinder-quitting
University of Queensland research has shown some Australians who smoke cigarettes are trying different methods to minimise their spending on tobacco rather than quitting, despite the greater financial and health benefits of quitting smoking.
Lead author Dr Ara Cho, from UQ’s School of Public Health (SPH), said the study collected data from around 5000 Australians who smoked cigarettes between 2007 and 2020.
“We observed an increase over time in the use of different strategies to reduce the cost of buying tobacco, such as buying in bulk, buying ‘economy’ brand cigarettes or rolling their own cigarettes,” Dr Cho said.
“Those who adopted these purchasing strategies were less likely to make quit attempts.
“We also found that while these purchasing strategies are intended to reduce the cost of smoking, people who use them, particularly people who smoke daily and have strong nicotine dependence, still end up spending more on tobacco each week on average than those who did not use these cost minimising strategies.
“This shows that these strategies may be a barrier to quitting by discouraging people from stopping smoking, but they do not effectively alleviate the financial impact of smoking.
“Marketing tactics during the tax increases, such as the introduction of low-cost alternative products, a variety of pack and pouch sizes, economy cigarette brand variants and roll-your-own tobacco with popular traditional cigarette brands, may encourage consumers to continue smoking instead of quitting,” Dr Cho said.
SPH researcher Professor Coral Gartner highlighted several potential policy measures that could be taken by policy makers to address the issue.
“Currently, the market offers a wide range of cigarette packs and roll-your-own tobacco pouch sizes, but this can be confusing for consumers to work out the price per cigarette,” Professor Gartner said.
“The Australian Government now has legislation to standardise these pack and pouch sizes, which should help consumers to better understand the price,” she said.
Professor Gartner stressed more funding to support people to stop smoking, particularly those on low incomes was urgently needed.
“The Government should also consider ways to offset the impacts of the tax measures on low income households through additional assistance,” she said.
“Further research is essential to monitor how industry marketing is dealing with the policy changes put forth by governments, and whether these changes continue to encourage people to quit smoking.
“Additional non-tax measures should also be introduced rather than relying on pricing measures as the main policy to encourage quitting.
“Internationally, other jurisdictions are implementing non-tax policies such as ending tobacco sales for people born after a set year or placing more restrictions on the types of retailers that can sell tobacco, or where tobacco retailers can be located.”
The study has been published in Tobacco Control.
