Peter Goers: The new brand of cigs should be called Hypocrisy

Just as you may enjoy your grog, I enjoy my now occasional gasper even though I’m paying through the nose, writes Peter Goers.

Don’t smoke. You can’t afford it. Australia has the most expensive tobacco products in the world. This is Federal Government policy to stop people smoking and it’s working. Fewer than 15 per cent of Australians smoke. Tobacco is more hidden from sale than pornography and guns.

People who don’t smoke are shocked at the cost and people who do smoke are even more shocked at the cost. I thought I’d fill you in as to what that cost is.

Some years ago, having been a heavy and unrepentant smoker forever, I decided I had to smoke much less. Not for health reasons – because we all know it’s a very slow suicide – but for financial reasons. By using nicotine chewies (to which I’m now addicted) I’ve stopped smoking 30 cigarettes a day and smoke only two. I also use the anti-smoking drug Champix. You’re supposed to be on it for three months but I’ve taken it for 11 years!

The last great tobacconist, Smokelovers in Rundle Street sadly closed two years ago. I miss it. On weekends I used to enjoy a cigar but a good Cuban cigar is $60 to $100 so now I enjoy one premium Indonesian clove-and-tobacco cigarette at sunset on weekends. These are no longer available in SA so I bought a carton of 10 packets of 20 cigarettes from an online Melbourne purveyor at a cost of – are you sitting down? – $483.90 plus postage. So these ciggies are now $50 a packet or $2.50 each.

It’s a bit rich. Picture: Thinkstock

Normally I smoke cheaper brands ranging between $37.95 and $40.10 per 20. The cheapest brand you can buy – Chinese cigarettes – are $29 for 20. Even rollies are more than $1 each.

In Australia, petrol has the most taxes but tobacco has the highest taxes of any product. More than three-quarters of the price is tax. If other products were taxed at the same level as tobacco, an $8 schooner of beer would be $42.

Plus, tobacco tax automatically increases by 15 per cent yearly. In five years’ time my $50 packet of cigs will cost me $100 and a packet of the cheap Chinese brand will be $58 – and that doesn’t include retail price rises. What of the poor and their rights to use a perfectly legal product?

The good news is these huge prices are a deterrent but the same deterrent does not apply to other harmful substances, especially alcohol. By the same regimen the cost of a schooner of beer in 2026 would be $84 and an espresso martini would be $116 – and society would, by the logic of huge prices being a deterrent to personal and social harm, be improved. The harm of alcohol is vast compared with tobacco.

Just as you may enjoy your grog, I enjoy my now occasional gasper even though I’m paying through the nose. This serves me right. I enjoy every cigarette but wished I’d never started. I’ll continue to smoke and be buried in a flip-top coffin. I’d like to eventually be like John Cleese, who has smoked just one cigarette a day. Less can be more.

If governments were really serious about stopping us smoking they’d ban it completely but since Australian governments make $19bn a year in tobacco taxes they have 19 billion reasons to keep us smoking. Prohibition can work. It’s worked with guns. But we have governments who despise smoking but make a fortune out of smokers. The new brand of cigs should be called Hypocrisy.

Peter Goers can be heard weeknights and Sundays on ABC Radio Adelaide.