Five Experts, Zero Solutions: Why Australia’s Tobacco Control Has Failed

Alan Gor 17 September 2025

Australia loves to parade its “world-leading” tobacco control model. High taxes, endless restrictions, and the prohibition of safer alternatives all hailed as proof of “success.” And yet, we now sit on the largest black market for tobacco in the world, a youth smoking rate that has stopped falling (and is rising), and a thriving organised crime economy that government policy itself created.

Recently, The Conversation asked five “experts” if lowering tobacco taxes could cut smoking rates. Predictably, all five said no. But when you read their responses carefully, a pattern emerges: they either ignore reality, cherry-pick history, or dodge the real issue entirely. Let’s break it down.

Becky Freeman

 – “Taxes are the centre of Australia’s success story.”

Becky Freeman insists that high taxes drove Australia’s smoking decline, and that lowering them would only “undercut public health.” But she completely sidesteps the elephant in the room: the black market.

If high prices worked the way she claims, we wouldn’t have illicit cigarettes flooding the country at half the legal cost. We wouldn’t have everyday smokers who don’t see themselves as criminals buying smuggled packs from tobacconists. And we certainly wouldn’t see young adults turning back to smoking after vaping was banned.

Taxes did help reduce smoking in the past. But today, their main effect is to funnel money away from hospitals and into organised crime. That isn’t “success.” That’s failure.

Coral Gartner

 – “Look at Canada in the 1990s.”

Coral points to Canada’s temporary tax cuts in the 1990s as proof that lowering taxes increases smoking. But this is cherry-picking.

Canada today has significantly lower cigarette prices than Australia, widespread legal vaping, and lower smoking rates. They didn’t just rely on excise, they combined reasonable taxation with a regulated harm reduction pathway.

Australia copied the tax but banned the alternative. That’s why our black market is booming while Canada’s youth smoking rates are falling. If Coral wants to use Canada as an example, she should tell the whole story.

Fei Gao

 – “Lowering taxes won’t reduce smoking overall.”

Fei argues that lowering taxes wouldn’t reduce the number of smokers, but would shift them from illicit to legal tobacco. But that’s exactly the point.

Every year, billions of dollars in revenue are lost to smugglers and gangs because the legal product has been priced beyond reach. Shifting that demand back into the legal market would at least ensure tax revenue supports health, not crime syndicates.

Fei’s argument is a sleight of hand: pretending that this shift doesn’t matter because “overall smoking won’t change.” But smoking hasn’t changed; people are just buying elsewhere. Refusing to acknowledge this is wilful blindness.

Roger Magnusson

 – “High prices plus weak enforcement.”

Roger admits the obvious: organised crime is thriving because laws are weak, penalties are light, and enforcement is lacking. But then he warns that cutting taxes would “encourage demand.”

The flaw in this logic is glaring. Demand already exists. People didn’t quit when prices went up; they just moved to the black market. All high taxes did was make smuggling profitable.

By refusing to see this, Roger is stuck defending a policy that punishes law-abiding smokers, rewards criminals, and still fails to reduce smoking rates. That’s not public health. That’s delusion.

Ron Borland

 – “The floor price matters.”

Ron at least acknowledges something the others won’t: the black market sets the floor price for tobacco in Australia. As long as illegal cigarettes are available for $20, it doesn’t matter if legal packs are $40 or $50; people will switch.

But then he stops short of the obvious solution: harm reduction. If you want to raise the “floor price” for cigarettes, you need to make safer alternatives (like vaping) cheaper and more accessible. Instead, Australia banned them, pushing smokers back to the cheapest option available: illicit tobacco and vaping products

Ron gets close to the truth but refuses to take the final step: admit that harm reduction works better than prohibition.

Here’s what’s missing from their arguments:

• Smoking rates were already stalling before the last round of excise hikes. Roy Morgan showed youth smoking went up after the vape crackdown, despite the world’s highest cigarette prices. That’s not success, that’s failure.

• Every single “expert” pretends the illicit market doesn’t count. But when 1 in 5 cigarettes is illegal, their smoking prevalence stats are built on sand. If people are buying packs under the counter, surveys and sales data become meaningless.

• Taxes created the black market in the first place. Ordinary smokers didn’t suddenly decide to deal with organised crime. They were priced out of the legal market. $40 a pack is an insult, so they turned to $20 illicit packs. Predictable.

• History is cherry-picked. They cite Canadian tax cuts in the 1990s, but ignore the present: Canada, New Zealand, and the UK all have lower cigarette prices and more realistic harm reduction policies. None of them faces a black market the size of Australia’s.

• The “solution” they push is always the same: fewer shops, higher taxes, harsher punishments. But that only drives demand underground, strengthens gangs, and puts retailers at risk of violence.

The elephant in the room? Australia has no legal harm reduction option. Vaping has been strangled, and cigarettes have been priced out of the reach of criminals. Until that changes, nothing will “fix” the problem.

The five experts all said no. But the truth is that Australia’s tobacco control establishment only knows one answer: higher taxes, more bans, and more denial. And that’s exactly why we’re stuck in this mess.