Victoria’s Tobacco War: If This Is Really About Health, Why Does the Strategy Feel So Contradictory?

There is something about Victoria’s so-called tobacco war that I think deserves a much bigger conversation.

And before anyone accuses me of preaching from a pedestal, I’ll admit something upfront:

I understand exactly why people buy cheap cigarettes.

If somebody who already smokes is confronted with the choice between a packet costing around $20 and another costing $50 or more, it doesn't take an economist to understand why the cheaper option becomes attractive.

I've seized that opportunity myself.

That doesn't make illicit tobacco legal, nor does it make smoking healthy. But it does demonstrate something governments should probably pay more attention to:

Price changes behaviour — and sometimes not in the direction government intended.

Australia has spent decades making tobacco increasingly expensive, partly to discourage smoking. But when the legal product becomes extraordinarily expensive while an illegal market can provide something substantially cheaper, we've created an enormous financial incentive for an underground market to exist.

Then we seem surprised when one appears.

THE TOBACCO WAR THAT DOESN'T QUITE LOOK LIKE A WAR

Victoria has experienced an increasingly visible battle over illicit tobacco, including enforcement operations, seizures and serious organised-crime concerns.

But this raises a question for me.

How serious are we actually treating tobacco itself?

Consider how differently society responds to different prohibited products.

If police discover illegal drugs during an interaction, those substances can become evidence and be seized.

Yet cigarettes and vapes occupy a strange territory.

Some tobacco may be perfectly lawful to possess. Other products may have entered the market illegally or fail Australian packaging and tax requirements. Vaping products operate under their own regulatory framework.

So I'm not suggesting that simply possessing an ordinary legal packet of cigarettes should suddenly become a criminal offence.

I'm asking something more fundamental:

If tobacco represents such a serious public-health problem, why does our overall system still revolve so heavily around taxation, price and enforcement of the market supplying it rather than systematically eliminating future demand?

That's where I believe Australia's strategy deserves reconsideration.

WHAT WOULD A SERIOUS TOBACCO ENDGAME ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE?

Imagine if Australia announced:

We're not going to endlessly increase tobacco prices and hope everybody eventually gives up. We're going to progressively phase tobacco out.

Instead of relying predominantly on taxation, governments could explore a generational approach to tobacco.

The legal purchasing age could progressively rise so that younger generations never enter the legal tobacco market in the first place.

The objective would not be to suddenly criminalise millions of existing adult smokers.

Quite the opposite.

Existing smokers could continue to receive cessation support and be encouraged to quit, while government policy increasingly prevented another generation from replacing them.

Over time, the legal tobacco market would shrink naturally.

That would also force governments to confront something uncomfortable:

If tobacco revenue eventually disappears, governments need to be financially prepared for that disappearance.

If eliminating smoking is genuinely the objective, then declining tobacco-tax revenue should eventually be regarded as a success — not a budgetary problem.

You can't simultaneously celebrate declining smoking rates while building financial expectations around continuing tobacco consumption forever.

THE $20 VERSUS $50 PROBLEM

This is where the current strategy begins eating its own tail.

Suppose somebody is already addicted to nicotine.

They aren't standing at the counter thinking:

"Which option best reflects Australia's long-term public-health objectives?"

They're probably thinking:

"$20 or $50?"

When the difference becomes enormous, illegal suppliers suddenly possess one hell of a competitive advantage.

That's basic economics.

Increasing taxation can discourage consumption, particularly among people considering quitting or people who haven't started.

But taxation also has limits.

Push the legal price far enough beyond what consumers are willing or able to pay and some people won't stop purchasing.

They'll change suppliers.

And once enough consumers do that, organised criminal markets have an opportunity.

That doesn't mean taxation caused every aspect of Victoria's illicit-tobacco problem. Criminal organisations remain responsible for their own actions.

But policy should still examine whether the economic environment helped create fertile ground for that market.

WHAT IF ENFORCEMENT LOOKED DIFFERENT?

There is another uncomfortable thought experiment worth considering.

If authorities genuinely regarded illicit nicotine products with anything approaching the seriousness attached to prohibited drugs, enforcement might look very different.

Police encountering clearly unlawful tobacco or vaping products could have stronger and clearer pathways for confiscation, referral or enforcement where legislation permits it.

Retail enforcement could become faster.

Supply chains could be targeted before illegal businesses become entrenched.

Intelligence from regulators, taxation authorities, health agencies, customs and police could operate as one coordinated system rather than separate bureaucratic islands.

But enforcement alone cannot solve demand.

You can raid one shop today and another supplier can appear tomorrow if thousands of customers are still waiting to purchase the product.

That's the lesson Australia should already have learned from decades of drug prohibition:

Where substantial demand exists, somebody will usually attempt to supply it.

So perhaps the smarter tobacco strategy isn't simply a bigger hammer.

Perhaps it's reducing the number of nails.

HEALTH OR REVENUE?

This is the question I think governments need to be willing to answer clearly.

If tobacco policy is fundamentally about public health, then success should eventually mean:

fewer smokers,

fewer young people beginning,

less nicotine addiction,

less illicit trade,

less tobacco-related disease,

and eventually less tobacco-tax revenue because fewer people are buying tobacco.

Government should be willing to plan financially for exactly that outcome.

Otherwise an unavoidable perception develops that the system wants cigarettes expensive enough to discourage smoking — but still available enough to continue collecting enormous amounts of tax from the people who don't quit.

Whether that perception is fair or not, governments need to address it.

Because public-health policy depends on public trust.

DON'T PUNISH THE ADDICTION WHILE IGNORING THE ECONOMICS

I don't think the answer is turning every smoker carrying questionable cigarettes into a criminal.

That would risk punishing addiction rather than fixing the system producing it.

The bigger targets should be illegal commercial suppliers, organised criminal networks and the financial structures supporting them.

At the same time, Australia should be brave enough to reconsider the demand side.

Could we progressively increase the tobacco purchasing age?

Could we build a genuine generational phase-out?

Could cessation support become dramatically easier to access?

Could governments publish a long-term plan showing how budgets would adapt as tobacco revenue declines?

Could enforcement agencies coordinate more effectively against illegal commercial supply?

And most importantly:

Could we finally define what victory actually looks like?

Because a permanent "war on tobacco" isn't victory.

A society that eventually doesn't need a tobacco war is.

THE CONTRADICTION

Australia says:

Smoking kills.

We tax tobacco heavily partly to discourage people from smoking.

The legal product becomes extraordinarily expensive.

An illicit market offers smokers dramatically cheaper alternatives.

Consumers migrate toward that market.

Authorities then spend increasing resources fighting the illegal market.

And somewhere in that cycle, perhaps we've forgotten the most obvious question:

Why are we managing an endless tobacco economy instead of designing its ending?

If health really comes first, government policy should be capable of imagining a future where tobacco revenue approaches zero.

Not because cigarettes became even more expensive.

Not because smokers were hunted down.

Not because another shop was raided.

But because fewer and fewer people ever became smokers in the first place.

That's the tobacco policy I'd call ambitious.

Don't just fight the black market.

Don't just increase the tax.

Don't just confiscate the supply.

Turn off the demand — one generation at a time.

— Kyle (Xy) Josef Taus (KJT)

#SmileForKyle #Smile4Kyle