Nicotine Patches

Commonsense, let alone science, tells us that no level of smoking is safe or healthy.

Yet 2.9 million Australians smoke each day and smoking continues to be the leading cause of preventable death in Australia.  Each year smoking kills 15,000 Australians and costs the economy more than $31 billion.

With this sort of impact, we can’t afford not to act. By not acting to reduce smoking, we’re standing by letting people die.

Continue reading "The Federal Government takes on Big Tobacco" »

Every cigarette might be doing you damage but over the past few years it hasn’t been hurting Treasury. Smoking was already a ludicrously expensive pursuit by world standards in this country before the straight-laced uber-nerd Kevin Rudd and his nanny-in-chief Nicola Roxon were elected at the end of 2007.

By the beginning of last year, barely two years into Rudd’s brief and clean-living reign as prime minister, the price of a packet of smokes had jumped by more than one-third, with a one-off 25 per cent increase last February adding another $2.16 to a packet of 30 cigarettes.

Smokers fume, splutter and wheeze indignantly about this price-gouging and in my darker moments at the 7-11 as I empty the ATM to fuel my habit, I’ve often found myself among their number. No-one else cares of course. When it comes to public sympathy, smokers are on a hiding to nothing asking for understanding.

Continue reading "About time us smokers got some tax money back" »