"The reason that the Government taxes it so highly is to help pay for all the smoking related medical issues our hospitals have to deal with, and to try and discourage people from doing it.
How much do you think all those Quit Smoking adds cost?
If the Government wants you to do it, why are they drafting legislation to bring in plain packaging to again discourage people."


looking at the fed budget of 2010-11
after the 25% increase that was sold as stopping people from smoking and to discourage people from future smoking here are the figures,
$5 billion extra to the federal budget on top of what was already being collected prior to the smoking tax increase.
$27.8 million of that was for anti smoking campaigns and quitline. they also reduced internet advertising for quit smoking in the same budget from the previous year.
where did the rest of that money go? into the budget for spending on other things.
this money is being used on you also.

edit>
i just had another look, as i read some where smoking will cost us $33b from smoking, including social cost to the economy, but i looked again that is the projected outlook over a ten year period starting from 2005.

edit> again, ok ive reread the budget again, and rectified figures..
where i went wrong is i took that increase as annually the projections are actually over 4 years. so the gov makes $25 billion over 4 years after the increase in the 210/11 budget. so over ten years smoking tax makes an estimated $62b. and the cost for smoking and social costs over 10 years is $33b. thought i better rectify that, still a massive profit for the gov.

if you remember correctly the plain packaging was only introduced because of pressure from the greens, and to get it to pass through the senate, the reason for that was because the greens were angry only $27.8 million of the $5b dollars was being spent to actually stop smoking, so they went with plain packaging. N Rocson who was health minister at the time said she was against plain packaging and later changed her mind to push the tax increase through, as prior to that it was seen as a huge moneyy grab for a gov who wasted billions of dollars, in other words smokers saved none smokers from more tax.