A 'huge' trade-off: One Nation's pitch for cheaper cigarettes
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/pauline-hanson-cut-tobacco-excise-cheaper-cigarettes-black-market/9ajfklbuoOpen linkView original on leminal.spaceSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on leminal.spacehttps://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/pauline-hanson-cut-tobacco-excise-cheaper-cigarettes-black-market/9ajfklbuoOpen linkView original on leminal.space
44 replies
Anti-advertising laws and high taxes on cigarettes crushed smoking rates. Cigarettes use to be everywhere. People would be smoking on every street corner; cigarette butts on every footpath; a pervasive stench of smoke in basically every public building.
The anti-smoking campaign worked. Unfortunately, law-makers were slow to react to the rise of vapes, and now smoking got its foot back in the door with their highly addictive product.
I don't know what the right play now is, but I'd be highly reluctant to roll back a system that worked. Many of the people calling for reduction in cigarette tax have essentially zero credibility. Obviously there are businesses that want to sell more cigarettes and are willing to lobby to that effect, and people like Pauline Hanson love to take those sweet lobbying perks. So I'd be inclined to take the view of neutral experts, and the evidence of my lived history.
The thumbnail's colour-palette has all the hallmarks of a ron weasley scene in a later harry potter film.
It would be nice if one of the 5 pharmacies in my area would sell me the legal vapes, but they all refuse to do it so I buy the illegal vapes and I have no intention of stopping. Same for 90% of the 'smokers' at work. The rest are smoking manchester and buy the occasional pack of winfield as a treat.
Conveniently forgetting that the LNP Coalition was in power for what... 17 of the last 26 years, last as recently as 2022?
And that One Nation typically voted with them and gave their electoral preferences to them..
Yep and none of it matters, unfortunately.
I think we’re in a bit of trouble.
We have been in trouble for decades, now we are well and truly f*cked. It seems like 95% of electoral options are right wing, short sighted, self involved, backwards pricks.
I wish I could trust Australian voters to wake the f up and make the country a better place, instead of burning it the ground.
Yeah it’s hard to. I get the feeling a few are swinging green and independent though.
Buckle up though. It’s going to get worse.
I want to buckle up on a home made raft the f out of here
Honestly? We’re probably better off trying to fight it and vote it out where we can.
I don’t think there’s any thing better anywhere else. Maybe a couple of Euro countries with spine like Spain.
But yeah I hear it
I'm in victoria, we have an election this year.
I haven't voted for any of right wingers in decades... but the majority of Australian have, while pretending that one of them is left of centre.
NZ will be better again, if they don't completely fuck the election like last time, but the clock will be ticking there too, duopolies are not the solution.
Yeah I’m worried about that Victoria election ngl. I expect One Nation to go for its Senate and I’m hoping this rumour that Labor is willing to sacrifice it to prove a point is bullshit.
They will use whatever gets the vote, it is irrelevant whether it makes sense, or is good for the country. Australian voters have a long history of being easily bought/conned.
I call it shotgun policy strategy.
You just keep spouting stuff. You don't need an implementation plan. You don't even need to implement anything. The idea is to spout enough of them that it hits one person/group for each idea.
Trump is a master, and used his rallies to do it.
There's no coherence or overarching vision to them. You just keep reloading and blast away.
People remember the one they like,and ignore all the others that are rubbish. "But she has some good ideas." Yeah, so does my nephew, but he's not fit to run the country either.
Flooding the zone with shit. It's all the same MAGA playbook because it's all funded and supported by the same Epstein class.
It's an old strategy, but now it seems like politicians have no respect for voters, and are well aware there will be no repercussions for their continuous lies and treachery.
Someone flicked a global switch a couple of years ago, and now it is raining shit.
This is the only point that matters. Whatever the intention, the tax eventually failed. Somewhere in there was a point where the cessation of smoking planed out, then the vape ban did the rest. The black market really grew from then, to a point now where they’re being home delivered.
I’ve spoken to two cigarette smokers to get their anecdotal and they said they’d probably stop chasing BM cigarettes. Fortunately neither will vote for Hanson over it, but they’re under no doubt it’ll be a winner.
The tax is only failing due to the black market though isn't it?
So the question is why aren't the government destroying the black market?
With so many people buying black market cigarettes, it cannot be hard to make arrests, and trace sources.
Smoking laws could also be significantly tightened to include no smoking in public at all, as a start.
Doesn’t matter here, it’s exploitable for Hanson and will be even more so if they come down harder. Essentially though, you’re on the money.
I’ll be honest, the way they have delivery and mail order set up, I’m not sure if they can stop it now. They haven’t been able to lay a glove on it locally, I know this through the smokers I know. They can’t close the door of the local one because it takes phone numbers and there’s nothing to bust. The pickup times are 9-10pm at night, and some deliver as mentioned earlier.
It was always low hanging fruit. I told my smoker friends a month ago she’d do this. It’s money for jam.
makes you wonder what the next trick will be
Yeah, it does now that you mention it. They’ve covered online, phone and home delivery. The local distributors have a few locations as drop off zones. It’s a pretty tight ship.
There’s not a thing they can do about the shop down the road taking numbers. They can search it as much as they like but they’ll find nothing but papers, filters…all of which are good.
I worked for a business with an unusually high number of smokers last year, they were all buying black market cigarettes, apparently directly from a shop up the road.
"The shop down the road taking numbers" can be used to infiltrate the supply and distribution, if the police want to. Place an order, track the delivery vehicle back to their pick up location etc
Yeah possibly. They’re pretty sharp though, the police would want to be good undercover.
But yeah one of the weaknesses is the search and seizure powers being within the health department and not coppers
The coppers are buying illegal vapes
Agreed, hanson is just advertising shiny poo.
One Nation aren't the answer but the government isn't too smart with the way they are handling the tobacco black market. They have enormous power between legal enforcement and setting the rate of taxation to cyclically fuck over the black market in a huge way.
So, just make tax free days suddenly to make dealer stock worthless?
The horse has well and truly bolted in this case. To get people back to buying legal cigarettes again they're going to have to both lower the price and find a way to crack down hard on the illegal market. It takes a pretty principled person to decide to pay two or three times the price to get legal cigarettes when you can walk down the road and every man and his dog will apparently sell you cheap illegal ones.
I can only imagine how bad chinese cigarettes are for you, if they are willing to put melamine in baby formula.
Fair point, might want to avoid usa cigarettes too then...
If people cared about their health they probably wouldn't be smoking anyway. The packaging is basically screaming THIS SHIT WILL KILL YOU and people still buy them.
It's addictive though eh
I quit 18 years ago, the increasing price was what snapped me out it. Walking into a bottleshop has a similar effect these days $$$
It can work, it has worked. We had a big illegal cig trade going on, then Chretien lowered the tax and soon the people selling illegal smokes went on to something else, then the taxes were slowly reintroduced til they exceeded where they were before, there still are illegal smokes but not as prevalent as before and I don't think they are brand names these days. Supposedly the taxes on smokes here goes towards our health care
To save anyone else the search: Chretien was the Canadian Prime Minister from 1993-2003.