http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/labors-plain-pa…
More evidence is coming forward that plain packaging of cigarettes has failed as new sales figures for tobacco after the first year is showing sales are up.
As I stated here before it came in, it will cause a switch to cheaper brands. This is what has happened.
Since the legal price has gone up, I am confident that the illicit trade of tobacco in Australia is up a lot. Particularly, as its packaging is much nicer than the lawful plain packaging which is a shocker. As a result today, Australians are smoking slightly more.
I think that the people who advised and those that push this policy have some explaining to do. Large sums of money were spent on the conversion and 10, 000s of people were and still are forced to do a lot of extra work for what is now a zero or worse. They cannot argue that they did not get proper advice as many submissions were made before it went live, outlining these problems, the problem is they did not listen.
