CIGARETTES SOAR TO $35 A PACK AFTER A SNEAKY 12.5% TAX HIKE – AND YOU WON’T BELIEVE HOW MUCH A SMOKER NOW SPENDS EACH YEAR ON THEIR HABIT

• DANIEL PIOTROWSKI
  3 September 2019
• FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA 

The price of Australian cigarettes rose by another 12.5 per cent on Sunday – the latest in a series of tobacco excise hikes that’s taken the average packet to a world record of $35.

The federal Government has now hiked tobacco excise for seven consecutive years – with an average pack expected to hit $40 a pack by 2020. One health official said the habit will cost an average smoker $10,000 a year. 

The excise increases are on top of regular CPI hikes, with experts telling Daily Mail Australia an average cigarette stick now costs more than $1 including GST.

People looking to save a buck by rolling their own sticks are not immune to the tax sting, with prices for a bag of tobacco jumping by a similar amount.

Up and up and up and up: The federal government’s tobacco excise has leaped 12.5 per cent for every year since 2013 – plus an additional 25 per cent increase in 2010

Dr Colin Mendelsohn, from the University of NSW’s school of public health, said: ‘Until this price rise, Australia’s already got the highest cigarette prices in the world.

‘A pack of 20 Marlboro has been around $30 … New Zealand’s about $27 and everyone else is way behind. Now it’s only increased further’.  

Experts have said the endless tax hikes are likely to see Australia with $40 packets next year, when smokers are slapped with an eighth hike on September 1, 2020. 

Colin Mendelsohn said the tax hikes are no longer having a big impact on smoking rates

At the weekend, Abby Smith, the director of Quit Tasmania, told the ABC a pack-a-day smoker would now ‘spend over $10,000 a year’ on their habit.  

But Dr Mendelsohn told Daily Mail Australia the tax hikes were no longer having the big impact on smoking rates they once did. 

The World Health Organisation (WHO) found price hikes were ‘the single most effective way to encourage tobacco users to quit and prevent children from starting to smoke’.  

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released this year found the number of adults who smoke daily plunged from 23.8 per cent in 1995 to 13.8 per cent in 2017-18. 

But the bureau said, ‘over recent years however, the daily smoking rate remained relatively similar’ – dropping only 0.7 per cent between 2014-15 and 2017-18. 

Despite plain packaging, gruesome advertisements and ever more expensive cigarettes, Australian smoking rates have stalled

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Dr Mendelsohn said: ‘We’ve traditionally always known increasing taxes reduces smoking once.

‘But once you get to this eyewatering level people who are addicted will say, “I have no choice I have to keep smoking anyway.

‘You just dont get the benefit anymore. All you’re doing is punishing the addicted smokers who can’t quit and stimulating the black market.’

Prime Minister Scott Morrison himself announced the regular tax hit when he was the treasurer in 2016. 

Handing down the 2016-17 budget, Mr Morrison said the excise hikes would net the government $4.7 billion over four years.