Raising tobacco purchase age ‘unworkable’

A prominent anti-tobacco campaigner in Tasmania, Australia, has hit out at the state government’s proposal to raise the minimum age for buying tobacco products to 21 or 25, according to a story in the Hobart Mercury.

Ivan Dean, a member of Tasmania’s upper house, described the plan as impractical and unworkable.

And he said it would have less impact than would the implementation of the private member’s bill that he had presented to the Legislative Council this year and that aimed to create a tobacco-free generation.

Dean’s bill seeks to ban the sale of tobacco products to anyone born after 2000, from 2018.

“I just have a lot of concern about the government raising the smoking age to 21, 25 or whatever they might want to do, because what that does is impact on people who are currently smokers,” he said.

“If you are 24 years old and the law came in tomorrow, you can’t smoke, even though you might have been doing so legally for six years. So there will be a huge impact on people, whereas my proposal doesn’t impact on smokers at all, because people never have the legal opportunity to do so.”

Dean said the government’s announcement was premature, because the Legislative Council committee ­considering the tobacco-free generation bill had yet to report back to parliament.