Cutting tobacco excise won't stop illegal smoking |
This week, the news is that One Nation wants to cut the tobacco excise by 75 per cent. Tobacco excise is not a new topic – I wrote about it last year.
Essentially, the issue is one of tax and consumption.
Right now, the forecast for tobacco excise revenue is for it to fall to a level not seen this century:
Now that should be a good thing – it should mean fewer people are smoking.
The problem is, unless in 2021 we had a pretty astonishing drop-off in smoking rates, then something is amiss.
As the ABS found in June through analysing wastewater, consumption of tobacco and nicotine has not fallen, but the consumption of legal tobacco has:
There is some debate over these figures – it may not mean that actual smoking rates have risen but that the level of nicotine in the........