Melbourne’s tobacco war is rooted in endless tax hikes on cigarettes

Melbourne’s illegal tobacco war is a crime problem of the government’s own making – unrealistic public health policies have transformed a legal market into an uncontrolled and violent one.

Australia’s tobacco control policies are in disarray.

For more than a decade, we’ve seen the introduction of increasingly restrictive and coercive measures that have escalated to such a degree that for many they now constitute prohibition in all but name.

For cigarettes, this has predominantly been through the imposition of an endless series of extraordinary tax hikes in an attempt to force smokers to quit.

As a result, Australian cigarette prices are now the highest in the world, meaning that for many smokers – people who are disproportionately concentrated in disadvantaged groups – legal tobacco is simply no longer affordable.

For vapes, we’ve seen a prescription scheme that has been rejected by 96 per cent of people who vape, which will be replaced in October by a pharmacy model that has been rejected by most pharmacies.

With the ban on consumer vapes, affecting nearly 1.5 million Australians, we have created the second largest illegal drug market in the country and a massive new front in the war on drugs.

Together with the steadily increasing black market for cigarettes, this has been an extraordinary, multi-billion dollar gift to organised crime.

Battle for control of the black market has resulted in unprecedented violence on our streets.

This is a major crime problem of the government’s own making – one that the police and border force have acknowledged that they do not have the power to stop.

The government’s approach so far has been to double down and rely on increased enforcement in an attempt to crush the black market.

This reflects a fundamentally flawed and frankly utopian view of how black markets operate.

With sufficient supply and demand, both of which are more than evident with vapes and tobacco, illicit supply chains adapt around whatever obstacles are put in their way.

Stiffer sentences and tougher laws and fines are not effective deterrents for organised crime – they are job opportunities.

And the bigger the ban, the tougher the border, the more they can charge for their services.

We know this because we have over 50 years of research into the war on drugs.

This has conclusively shown that prohibition – whether it’s called that or not – does not work.

Despite the ever-increasing billions we spend on tougher enforcement, and the record numbers of arrests and seizures, we have lower illicit drug prices, increased availability and record consumption.

The reality is that unrealistic public health policies have transformed two legal, peaceful markets into increasingly uncontrolled and violent ones.

This needs to change.

We need to stop taxing tobacco out of the reach of those who can least afford it.

We need to stop stigmatising, pathologising and punishing people who vape.

Further positive change in reducing smoking related harms is possible, but not through force and coercion.

It will only be achieved through genuine and supportive engagement that respects the choices, dignity and autonomy of our fellow Victorians.

Dr James Martin is a senior lecturer in criminology and the Criminology course director at Deakin University