Too many illicit cigarettes are still ending up between Aussie fingers as lawmakers oscillate between cracking down on shady vendors and squeezing them out financially.<\/p>\n
Illicit tobacco now comprises 50 to 60% of Australia’s total tobacco trade, the Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarette Commissioner estimates, steering up to $11.8 billion in excise away from federal coffers.<\/p>\n
Every state and territory except the NT has proposed or passed tougher tobacco legislation since January 2025, licensing retailers, shutting shops, increasing fines and seizing more cigarettes.<\/p>\n
Queensland and South Australia topped a tobacco enforcement league table compiled by advocacy group the Australian Council on Smoking and Health (ACOSH), earning praise for mobilising compliance officers and banning online sales.<\/p>\n
Others lag far behind, with fifth-placed Victoria home to just 14 enforcement officers compared to more than 200 in Queensland.<\/p>\n
“We need enforcement on the ground, but not only the laws for enforcement – we also need boots on the ground,” the council’s chief executive Laura Hunter told AAP.<\/p>\n
States were also far too loose with licensing, Ms Hunter said.<\/p>\n
“If I were to get a piece of paper in WA right now and fill it out … I could sell tobacco tomorrow,” she said.<\/p>\n
“If I was to get a liquor licence, I would have to go through property checks, police checks, community hearings in local councils … it is way too easy in this country to possess and sell tobacco.”<\/p>\n
More than 90% of Australians are not daily smokers, but the country is home to about 40,000 tobacco retailers – far exceeding the roughly 7000 petrol stations and 6000 pharmacies nationwide.<\/p>\n
While some argue in favour of choking off supply, the black market’s staggering profitability and the inventiveness of criminal sellers limit the impact of tougher crackdowns.<\/p>\n
“Criminal networks … absorb enforcement losses as a routine cost of doing business,” Australian Border Force said in a submission to an ongoing Senate inquiry into illicit tobacco.<\/p>\n
“(They) rapidly reconstitute supply chains following enforcement action.”<\/p>\n
Cutting the tobacco excise could constrict criminals’ profits by lowering their price ceiling, potentially squeezing illicit tobacco out of the market, but this makes public health experts bristle.<\/p>\n
“The argument to reduce the tobacco tax is a little nonsensical,” University of Sydney tobacco control researcher Christina Watts told AAP.<\/p>\n
“Reducing the tax to 2019 levels … in the 20-something dollars, that’s still not going to compete with an illicit product at $15 or even as low as $7 or $8 that we’re seeing.”<\/p>\n
Illicit tobacco networks might also be too well-entrenched for an excise slash to make a dent, economic research institute e61 argued in December.<\/p>\n
It favoured a mix of stricter enforcement and prudent financial leveraging, saying public health advocates might need to make tobacco cheaper.<\/p>\n
Both major parties oppose cutting the excise.<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including severe flooding in Wellington, and Christopher Luxon\u2019s digging in. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Too many illicit cigarettes are still ending up between Aussie fingers as lawmakers oscillate between cracking down on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[85,138,67,134,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-389418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-crime-and-justice","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}