Labor and cigarettes: a policy contradiction

It’s time Labor woke up and cut the cigarette excise.

The steep successive rises in tobacco tax have not delivered the public-health outcome that was promised. Instead they have created a thriving black market. Illicit cigarettes now arrive by the tonne, undercutting licensed retailers and flooding the streets with cheap product. The result is more organised crime, more violence around distribution networks, and a growing sense that the official system has simply been priced out of existence. Australia’s long-standing image of itself as an isolated island that can control what comes in has taken a visible knock; the supply lines from Asia are clearly open and efficient.

There is a certain irony here. One Nation once ran on the idea that greater openness to Asia would bring problems Australia was unprepared for. On this particular issue, that prediction has proved uncomfortably accurate.

I am not an advocate for smoking. I am, however, someone who lives with schizophrenia, and I have yet to meet another person with the same diagnosis who has managed to quit for good. Nicotine is one of the few reliable tools many of us have for managing symptoms, focusing attention, or simply getting through the day. When the government repeatedly raises the price of that tool far beyond the reach of people on disability support or low incomes, the message received is simple: Labor does not care about this group. The mentally ill already feel under-represented. Adding a policy that treats their coping mechanism as a revenue stream only deepens that alienation – at a time when every vote will matter.

The contradiction is glaring. On one side stands the medical establishment, which works hard to discourage smoking while the state continues to collect enormous sums from the remaining legal market. On the other side sits a large, angry, and largely ignored constituency of smokers – many of them dealing with serious mental illness – who are heading into the next election in no mood to forgive.

And then there are the children. No serious person wants kids to take up smoking. The single most effective way to prevent that is for them to grow up in smoke-free homes. That responsibility belongs first and foremost to parents. A coherent smoking policy should therefore centre on education, support for parents who want to quit, and realistic pathways for those who cannot, rather than on endlessly extracting money from the poorest adults. The price increases of the last decade have demonstrably failed to achieve the stated goal of protecting the next generation; they have mainly shifted consumption underground and left the most vulnerable feeling punished.

If Labor is serious about both public health and social fairness, it needs to confront the evidence on the ground: the black market is winning, the revenue model is feeding crime, and a significant group of voters has noticed. Cutting the excise would not be a surrender to smoking. It would be an admission that the current approach has produced perverse results and that a different balance is required.