Why Governments Get It Wrong by Dennis C. Grube

Author:Dennis C. Grube [C. Grube, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK
Published: 2022-06-24T17:00:00+00:00

5. Ducks in a Row: What Success Looks Like

It is so seductive, isn’t it? The gentle curl of the smoke from a cigarette. The smell of the tobacco. The look of sophistication embodied in Don Draper’s nonchalant holding of a cigarette in one hand, with a glass in the other. When I was growing up in Australia in the 1980s, smoking seemed simultaneously rebellious and grown-up. Marlboro Man ads were in every corner shop. The height of disdain for authority was to ride your BMX bike to one of those shops and convince the owners in that less cautious age that they should sell you a packet of smokes. Unfortunately, due to the curse of a good upbringing, I couldn’t bring myself to join in the rebellion. I stayed outside to mind the bikes.

If you look at the statistics, smoking rates were actually already in decline during the 1980s, especially amongst Australian men. In the early 1960s, 58 per cent of men were smokers, double the rates amongst women. By the mid-1980s, this had come down to 33 per cent of men (whilst rates for women held remarkably steady in the high 20s).1 But that still means that somewhere close to a third of Australian adults were addicted to tobacco. And the smoke was everywhere.

I was lucky enough to go on an international flight to Europe as a teenager in 1987 and the plane had a smoking section. It wasn’t hidden behind some kind of all-encompassing plastic screen. As many readers will remember, the smoking seats just started behind rows that were non-smoking. There was little real demarcation. No fancy smoke extractors to make the smoke disappear. In order to trek back to the toilets, you had to wave your way through clouds that just hung in the air.

Fast-forward to 2019 and the number of Australian adults who smoke is down to 11.6 per cent.2 Not only can you no longer smoke on the plane, you can’t even smoke in the terminal building. In fact, you can’t smoke within four metres of the entrance to such a building. You can’t smoke in pubs or clubs. Smokers across the country find themselves huddled instead in small outside corners that have been set aside solely for the purpose of dragging in a quick nicotine hit. There’s no Don Draper moment here. No languid reclining whilst ‘enjoying’ a cigarette. Things have changed.

The health benefits are obvious. Coronary heart disease, lung cancer, and strokes are all big killers in Australia, and smoking increases your chances of getting any or all of them. Mind you, we’ve known for decades that smoking isn’t exactly good for you. We knew it even when my mates were riding those BMX bikes down to the corner shop to buy yet more cigarettes. The danger of the substance made its consumption cooler.

Not any more. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has undertaken the National Drug Strategy Household Survey every few years since 1985. One of the things it measures is levels of public opinion about the ever-increasing laws and rules around smoking.

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