This is how much food you can get for the cost of a pack of cigarettes in Australia (50 AUD) : pictures

[+] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I do not agree with your sentiments to vaping and Australia pandering to larger tobacco companies. Vapes are not nearly as readily available as cigarettes and the regulatory hurdles to approval are restrictive meaning that smaller companies who are not willing to obtain the certification, do not end up on the market. Nicotine content is also highly controll compared to other markets.

I believe the aim was to ban vaping overall, but they saw the wave of legal battles to get to that point and decided on this as a middle ground to save cost/effort. You could argue that putting them in pharmacies aligns them as a "health" product, which is not great...

Also, the increased cost of cigarettes is in itself a harm minimisation measure. The tax is meant to be a motivator to stop people starting or continuing smoking, independent of who they are.

I don't know what could be done better here, what would you suggest?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

A black market pack is $12 and noone I know buys legal cigarettes anymore. I'd love to know how they manage to smuggle in enough to meet the demand. The firebombings are an unpleasant side effect but the government loves the tax rake.

[–] Blaze 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

@[email protected] , is this correct?

[–] Gold_E_Lox 4 points 4 months ago

not them but yes, but i doubt the grocery prices are post covid. i buy very similar (cheap shitty) products and this would be much closer to 100 aud these days