Health warnings on individual cigarettes and new graphic images on cigarette packets are among the changes the federal government plans to introduce as part of its crackdown on the tobacco industry.
The proposed legislation has been released by Health Minister Mark Butler today, with consultation open until July.
The minister said the legislation had to pass parliament by April next year, and he was confident it would help drive down smoking rates and respond to marketing strategies the tobacco industry had introduced to get around current laws.
“We are determined to keep renewing the fight against an industry that keeps changing its strategy,” Mr Butler said.
“It seeks to change its marketing strategy to get around what a government might decide from time to time.
“So you can’t just set and forget — you’ve got to remain agile, you’ve got to recognise what the industry is doing to keep that market share, [that it] keeps marketing the product of death.”
The proposed changes come more than a decade after rules around plain packaging of cigarettes was introduced by the then Labor government.
Changes to come into place by 2025
Under the proposed changes that were first flagged last year, there will be a standardised size for tobacco packets and products, as well as a standardised design for filters.
In what would be a world first, health warnings would be issued on each cigarette and not just the packet.
Mr Butler said health warnings and graphic images on packets would be updated because people had become desensitised to them.
“Research indicates [those warnings] clearly have largely become too familiar, they have been desensitised through familiarity, so we will be updating those warnings and those graphic images,” he said.
The tobacco industry will also be required to include public health information in both loose-leaf and cigarette packets.
Meanwhile, flavours and additives such as menthol will be prohibited, and certain names on packets will be limited or prohibited from use.
Mr Butler said the look of products and some words encouraged people to take up smoking and that had to be stopped.
“[There are] names that are designed to mislead users, [that suggest] the cigarettes they are using are somehow going to be good for them, names like smooth or fresh burst,” he said.
“These things are a cynical deliberate marketing strategy to bring new smokers into this public health menace and will be prohibited in this legislation.”
Mr Butler said he intended to introduce the legislation to parliament later this year and it had to pass parliament before April next year.
“The legislation that was put in place by former minister Nicola Roxon had a sunset date of April 1, 2024,” he said.
“So if we do not pass replacement legislation, the current suite of regulations around plain packaging, graphic warnings and the like will lapse on April 1, so we intended to get this legislation passed by the parliament before April 2024.”
There would then be a transition period of 15 months, which means the new rules would come into effect from July 2025.
Smoking rates have flatlined
The National Tobacco Strategy commits to reducing daily smoking prevalence to below 10 per cent by 2025 and 5 per cent or less by 2030.
The current smoking rates in Australia are about 12 per cent and Mr Butler said that had flatlined in recent years, which justified the need for new legislation.
“I am not going to raise the white flag on smoking at 12 per cent of adults, I am not going to raise the white flag at a time when smoking rates among our youngest citizens are climbing,” he said.
“There is sometimes this idea that the current group of smokers are hardened and are never going to be shifted. The research does not reflect that.
“We are determined to meet the targets that were set out in the national tobacco strategy that has been agreed by all governments. “
