Tax rises not working

Australia is one of the most expensive countries in which to buy cigarettes, with retail prices set to reach nearly A$40 for a 30-piece pack after this year’s Budget, according to a Nova Network story quoting the federal Treasurer Scott Morrison.
September 1 is scheduled to see the imposition of the second of four planned, consecutive 12.5 percent tobacco excise increases.
The September increase will see the price of a 30-piece pack of cigarettes increase by about A$3. When the first of the increase was imposed last year, the price of a pack of 30 Winfield Blues rose from A$32.50 to A$35.20.
But it seems that high prices do little to convince smokers to quit.
According to the Nova Network story, Australia saw an 0.2 percent drop in smokers during a recent three-year period, which saw also cigarettes being sold in standardized packs.
Meanwhile, a Channel 7 News story had it that the number of people giving up smoking in Australia had slowed in recent years despite the country’s having the highest-priced cigarettes in the world.
England, the US, Canada, Norway and Iceland were said to be among a long list of western countries that were seeing their citizens kick the habit at a faster rate.
The Channel 7 story quoted Colin Mendelsohn, a tobacco treatment specialist and associate professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales, as saying that “high prices simply aren’t working anymore”.