Mike’s Minute: Was smokefree a failure or partially successful?

There seems to be increasing reportage, based around some new research, that our dream of being smokefree is up in smoke.

2025 is the year when we were aiming to be smokefree. By smokefree, it would have been reduced to 5% left smoking.

To meet that goal, the research says about 80,000 more people need to quit. They won't.

Eric Crampton: 'Prohibition' approach to smoking unlikely to succeed

Budget 2022 allocated just over $2.5 million a year, over four years, to the Customs Service to help it stop cigarette smuggling.

I wonder whether it will be enough. Prohibition is expensive to enforce, and legislation working its way through Parliament is going to be getting us awfully close to prohibition.

It is a bit of a shame. There are far better ways of encouraging harm-reduction if that were still the goal of tobacco policy.