Australian public health officials are sure to be paying keen attention to New Zealand's ambitious plans to slash the number of smokers to less than five per cent of the population by 2025.
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A suite of measures, including an outright ban on selling tobacco to anyone aged under 14 in 2025 for life, are expected to be introduced to the NZ parliament in 2022.
Long-serving Windermere MLC Ivan Dean tried and failed for years to introduce similar measures in Tasmania and all of the arguments being mounted by the Ardern government in favour of its plans apply to Australia in spades.
Reductions in smoking rates in New Zealand, which has been committed to a "Smokefree 2025" goal since 2012, have lagged behind Australia.
About 25 per cent of New Zealanders smoked in the year 2000. That fell to just 12.5 per cent by 2019. In 2000, 20 per cent of Australian adults smoked.
That had fallen to 11.6 per cent in 2019.
The Department's latest Tobacco Smoking snapshot states that 9.3 per cent of the total burden of disease in Australia in 2015 with about 21,000 deaths were attributable to tobacco consumption in that year.
Tobacco smoking is an even bigger threat to public health than the coronavirus pandemic and that, like COVID-19, it is something that can be managed and contained if sufficient resources are made available.
While Australia has done well in reducing its smoking rates over the last two decades the curve is beginning to flatten.
While this may, at least in part, be due to the law of diminishing returns still more needs to be done.
While the 2021 decision to ban the sale of e-cigarettes containing nicotine without a prescription was an excellent precautionary measure they, along with vapes, are still serving as gateways to smoking through back door channels.
While there is strong evidence policies such as plain paper packaging and the sponsorship of quit smoking initiatives have worked well there could be merit in following New Zealand's lead and setting a date by which Australia should be tobacco free.
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