Putting the cart before the horse there... If you dramatically reduce the exorbitant tobacco taxes, the black market will not be able to sustain itself, and you won't have to hunt them all down 💁‍♀️

Legalise the growth of tobacco plants in Australia then people Grow their own problem solved.

I'm still trying to come to terms that we have a "Illicit Tobacco Commissioner" 😂

Price differential is the key to why cheap tobacco is around

Time to licence people to grow their own for personal use... $1000 a year... and illicit tobacco and organised crime in this sector would dissappear forever.

You don’t need to assume anything. Just read the comments. There are people among them that are openly saying they won’t buy retail cigarettes because they’re getting much cheaper cigarettes through other means. And the only reason why tobacco is so expensive in this country is because of taxes and excise. The government created the demand for a black market

Malcolm I like you but don't vilify vapes. It's far healthier than government edition cigarettes that have hundreds of chemicals on them where is a vape juice that's made properly can have vegetable glycerine VG propeline glycol PG and natural flavours or essence. Maybe we should get rid of the billion dollar big tobacco industries and bring back proper old school tobacconist again who sell natural products

Tax collected on a packet of cigarettes is around $40. I think that's more than enough money to pay any health care costs in later life. The government should address the costs to the community and health in regards to Alcohol. It causes more deaths, assaults, costs and disruption to the community than any other drug.

For a 30g pouch of tobacco $100 $73 of that goes to the government

Our lungs, our choice...sup with the discrimination against tobacco smokers.

The government created this with their taxes. Unless they can match the "illicit" sales price of tobacco and sell the rum and and other flavour tobacco products again, people will not change.

What about the twenty thousand dollars tobacco license to sell tobacco quiet sure that doesn’t add up

So bad huh but yet legal to sell 🤣🤣

They clearly haven't got a clue.

The biggest criminal activity to do with tobacco is the amount of money the government makes of it , and dont put it back into the health system

Stop dribbling and answer the question!

Because it’s by design, flood the nation with cheap smokes, tobacco and vapes. Squeeze legitimate businesses out and then there will come a time when they say oh we will just ban it, only allow you to have them with a doc cert and purchase them from a chemist.then they could double their profit margins by tapping into that Medicare nest egg.

The greater, far more serious issue is not the sale of cheap tobacco products, but the fact these banned products made it through, and continue to freely pass Australia's supposedly secure borders. If commercial quantities of illicit products are entering unchecked, then what else is being missed ? Are our borders safe ?

Oh wow spend more money to police it and they now that won't work. It's just numbers. The only number is to reduce the tax. I can only assume Labor didn't finish year 12.

To hard basket lol i dont want to have to work to hard lol

That’s funny as fuck

The government has priced them selves out of the market 🤪

Malcolm the MAN

In other words you have no idea 🤷

As a ex tobacco farmer in Victoria I still remember when we as growers were receiving $6.00 per kg of cured leaf and the government were making $293.00kg.