As someone who's never smoked, I find this entire thing quite interesting. It's interesting how there's so much discussion about legalising weed, and then on the flipside also some discussion about criminalising tobacco. Personally, I find them both to be quite gross vices, but ultimately take a "not my business and I don't really care" approach.
“I am not going to raise the white flag on smoking at 12 per cent of adults,” Butler declared when announcing the excise hike.
This did make me wonder when they will deem the smoking rate low enough to relax a little, though. Also, surely at some point they'll cross a line where further increases or disincentivising tactics will objectively cause more harm than good. I mean, tobacco is an addictive substance, and most of the people who smoke are addicted to it. I think there will be a point where enough people will choose to fund their addiction over other essentials, or poor quality, unregulated black market stuff will send them into an even earlier grave.
Just anecdotally, my mum was a moderately heavy smoker and eventually started buying low quality crap from a dodgy shop that sold it on the side. It was a roll your own type operation, but I think they also sold store bought packets and took part of the end off (although that's just speculation) before repackaging them and selling them for a slight discount. But they used every bit of tobacco they bought, including stuff that fell on the floor. They'd sweep it up, along with whatever other crap was on their floors and put it into their smokes. They were probably doing a bunch of other dodgy shit too it as well. Eventually my mum got fairly sick from it. She was alright after a few days in hospital, but it was caused by all the dust and other debris that ended up in their tobacco.
A lot of people will (and have!) stopped smoking because it's too expensive, but I feel like we're starting to reach diminishing returns territory. The people who won't or can't quit will continue to smoke, even if they have to go without basic essentials to do so.