Packet of 25 cigarettes to cost more than $40 by 2020 under Labor

The Labor Party has announced a plan which would see a packet of 25 cigarettes cost more than $40 by 2020.

The price rise would stem from gradual increases in the tax on cigarettes continuing beyond 2017, if Labor is elected.

The Opposition said the policy would generate savings of almost $50 billion over the medium term and almost double the rate at which people quit smoking.

"Money that we want to put towards budget consolidation but also towards very important health initiatives," Labor's health spokeswoman, Catherine King, said.

A packet of 25 cigarettes currently costs between $25 and $30.

Ms King said the increase would correspond with advice from the World Health Organisation.

"We have some 2.5 million Australians who continue to smoke and we lose about 15,000 people a year from smoking-related diseases," she said.

"The World Health Organisation will tell us, as our own national tobacco strategy does, that you do need to continue to ramp up the excise on cigarettes if you are going to continue to drive smoking rates down."

Ms King said the increase would bring Australia into line with the excise rates of about 33 other countries.

She acknowledged heavy smokers were some of the poorest people in society and promised more policies to help prevent and deal with smoking addiction.

"We want people to stop, we want more people to give up, we want more people who are in difficult circumstances to give up as well because we know that smoking kills people," she said.

"We'll be making some further announcements about what we might do to assist people, particularly those areas of the population who find it very difficult to give up smoking."

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said the policy showed the "stark" difference between Labor and the Government.

"Labor wants to reduce the number of people who smoke; Malcolm Turnbull's Liberals want to increase the GST and the cost of everything, including fresh food, school fees and going to the doctor," he said.

Ms King said increasing taxes on fresh food was "regressive from a health point of view".

"When you look at it from a health point of view, it is a retrograde step and it would predominantly hit those on poorer incomes as well."

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Low Nicotine Cigarettes Answer To User Dependence

A new study shows that nicotine dependence on cigarettes can be trimmed off in some extent. The researchers show that users that switch to using low nicotine content cigarettes tend to smoke less and may actually stop their smoking habit in the future.

Neal Benowitz, MD stated in his published commentary that by varying the amount of nicotine present in cigarettes or minimizing its content will give the smokers a lesser habit as well as newcomers will be prevented from becoming addicted to smoking. This same principle was applied to the latest study published just this month by Dr Eric Donny. He suggested a strategy to wean off smokers is by decreasing the amount of nicotine in the cigarette.

The study was conducted  for 840 participants and all are heavy smokers. The researchers asked them to report the number of cigarettes they finished a day and compare it to the number that they normally have before the test.

Modified cigarettes were used in the experiment to really assess if the hypothesis is true. The participants were also assessed about their withdrawal syndrome issues and behaviour while the experiment is ongoing. After the experiment, the researchers observed the pattern created by the varying nicotine level showed positive results. The researchers have found out that the  difference between those who smoke cigarettes with higher nicotine level and those who smoke low-nicotine cigarettes have gone down by 25 percent.

The participants who consumed lower levels of nicotine has reported lower symptoms of nicotine dependence, which makes a good case in proving that lower level of nicotine would help weaning off addiction to smoking. The group is looking forward into greater studies on the matter. They also stated that the study is not pointed out in putting a stop in cigarette smoking, rather it's just to show that minimizing the consumption of nicotine is actually healthy for the body.

better way to save money is to buy low-nicotine cigarettes online.