Advice from the statistician reveals a chilling death prognosis for Aboriginal Australians. One in every two deaths can be directly related to their use of tobacco and the nicotine it contains. These are compelling statistics and the analysis released by the Centre for Independent Studies compares the death in Indigenous communities with the rest of the country.
It found that smoking caused 37 % of deaths at any age in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults, but that this increased to about half for those aged over 45. Using data from 1,888 people it revealed that those who never smoked lived ten years longer than those who did smoke.
The " Quit smoking " message is slowly getting through to Aboriginal people, but at a much slower rate than for other Australians and this is despite the price of tobacco products being artificially increased to prohibitive levels on a regular basis.
What to do next poses something of a quandary for the government. That ever increasing price of tobacco products is simply a tax measure that pours money into government coffers and tobacco is a legitimate farm crop that is important to the farming industry.
Nicotine is addictive and some people find they can not do without it, despite the cost and there would certainly be a political backlash if tobacco products were banned in Australia, despite the lives that would be saved. There is also a doubt in many people's minds that much would change. We already have bans on addictive drugs and yet they are still pouring into the country as smuggled imports.
A ban on tobacco products would simply add tobacco as an added volume to what is the international drug trade that thrives despite draconian penalties. The amazing profits that can be made from drug dealing make the risk of getting caught a favourable risk equation in many criminal minds.
It seems we have taken all the anti smoking measures possible short of banning the product in Australia. It has been removed from all advertising media and it can not be openly displayed on shop shelves. It's packaging has been made deliberately hideous and heavy fines now apply for smoking in many public places.
The price will go even higher as we try and tax tobacco out of existence, but even that is being circumvented by the smugglers. Every country town and city suburb has a network of clandestine dealers distributing both cigarettes and loose tobacco that has been smuggled into the country.
Sadly, we are now finding that tobacco deaths are falling predominantly on the original people of this nation and while it remains a legal product we are condoning those deaths. The option for a total ban on tobacco now seems inevitable !
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