University in Australia has proposed a new plan to stop smoking

A UNIVERSITY in Australia has proposed a new plan to stop smoking in the country where cigarettes will be banned from regular stores and only available from pharmacies.

As part of the initiative, the University says smokers would be required to have a prescription in order to get their cigarettes as it looks to eradicate smoking from the country altogether.

The proposal of this “endgame” approach has been suggested by the University of Queensland’s Centre for Research Excellence on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame (CREATE) who state that tobacco causes “one in seven deaths” in Australia.

Associate Professor Coral Gartner of the University, wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia’s Insight: “Examples of proposed endgame approaches include regulating the content and emissions of tobacco products to make them non-addictive, less palatable, or to remove the most harmful products from the market entirely based on their toxicant profile.”

“Proposed supply reduction strategies range from reducing the number of tobacco retailers, restricting sales to particular categories of suppliers (eg, pharmacies), ending sales to everyone born after a certain year, phasing out commercial cigarette sales and regulated markets or non-profit supply models,” concluded Prof Gartner.

The prevalence of smoking is under 15 per cent in Australia which is one of the lowest rates in the world, however, around 2.3 million Australians spark up everyday.

Professor Gartner says 15 per cent is the ‘critical point an endgame becomes politically feasible’ as tobacco excise brings in around $17billion dollars a year for the Australian government.

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