By: Mike Hosking | Friday, August 17, 2012 11:33 AM

I guess the Australian government can feel pretty upbeat about their tobacco win and I guess the Tariana Turias can feel equally optimistic that we might piggyback on its success. But I can’t be the only one who sees the hypocrisy in all this, the sheer inefficiency of the whole process.

I can’t quite work out just what it is our government or Australia’s really wants to achieve. If it’s a smoke free society they have the answer - make it illegal. This campaign they’re currently running has been going for years – smoke free areas, bans on promotion and advertising, dairy display changes, now plain packaging, the endless campaigns on TV and radio over the dangers, the endless health messages. Surely we have got to the point where we have basically done all we can short of banning the damn things.

In the years this has been going on, how much has been spent? It must be billions. And all the while the Government, while telling us how bad it all is and how we shouldn’t do it, are more than happy to collect the tax. Hundreds of millions in tax every year.

As an exercise in setting out to reach a goal, this has been hopelessly inefficient. If you don't want to make tobacco illegal, then price is your key. Price is easy, it keeps you out of court, it’s done at the stroke of a pen and is highly effective. Make a packet $50, and if that doesn’t work make it $100. Don't give me the “it will create a black market” line because it won’t. It never does. Black markets are for crooks and thugs and underworld figures, not regular people with a bad habit looking for an excuse to quit. Give them the excuse, offer them a bit of help like Quitline and patches and all that other stuff and you’ll make a massive dent in a comparatively short period of time.

Plain packaging is an expensive battle the tobacco companies are prepared to fight. Taxing it they can’t touch. Taxing it is the Government’s prerogative and they can’t do a thing about it. Given that, why then doesn't the Government do it? Why don't they make it easy on themselves? Why end up in the World Trade Organisation battling this for years? Why spend money on the lawyers? Why take small incremental steps all of which are expensive and time consuming when price is your sledgehammer?

You can only wonder, and I am doing so out loud, you can only wonder just how committed they actually are to all of this, that just maybe the old tax income might be as addictive as the tobacco they’re allegedly trying to get rid of. You would hope not but the battle against big tobacco has been going on for well over two decades and although you would have to concede governments are broadly on the winning side, the pace of the victory is bordering on glacial.

Photo: stock.xchng