A pack of butts for fifty euros is a good idea, only that the Netherlands is not an island | commentary
The price of a pack of cigarettes has to go to almost fifty euros in 2040. It is one of the scenarios that the cabinet is implementing, following a successful Australian example, to ban smoking. A good idea is one not too different: the Netherlands is not an island.
To make a country smoke-free – it’s just that simple – you can sell the tobaccos. That dared, always good for a quiz question, until now only one country in the world.
The Netherlands is trying to do this with information campaigns, dire volumes, cigarettes out of sight everywhere, advertising bans and – even if – increases in excise duties. Measures that have a good solid effect. Over the past ten years, the number of adults who smoke has risen from one in four to one in five.
semi-soft
But the anti-smoking policy is still half soft if there really is an ambitious one to help the Netherlands get rid of smoking. The ban on sales in supermarkets from 2024 will also not make a difference. The price on screws is. A negative price incentive is the way to get people to stop, they know in Australia, where a hefty increase has been made twice a year since 2013.
A pack of 25 cigarettes already costs almost 50 Australian dollars, more than 33 euros. More than one in ten Australians still smoke, more than halved since the excessive price hikes began.
14 years in 2027
Images circulate on Australian social media of well-stocked shopping carts, bought for the price of a pack of butts. In New Zealand, she is using another drug. Anyone fourteen years younger in 2027 will never be able to legally buy a cigarette in their lifetime. From that year on, the age limit will increase every year. A long-term approach, but effective.
It is commendable if the government takes the lead in putting an end to the country’s most unhealthy habit here too. But unlike Australia and New Zealand, a strong smoking regime and sky-high prices will only work if the countries around us and also participate. The Netherlands is of course a land of water, but we are not an island. Just ask the gas station owners in the border region.
(And we’re not a mountain state like Bhutan, the only tobacco-free country in the world.)