Australia: the healthiest country by 2020
National Preventative Health Strategy - Overview
Tobacco
Table of contents
- Chair's Foreword
- The purpose of the Strategy; What is in the Strategy?
- The need for urgent, comprehensive, prioritised and sustained action; What will be different because of the Strategy?
- Prevention works; Progressive, staged and comprehensive action
The Strategy – summarised, prioritised and phased- The conceptual framework for the Preventative Health Strategy
Strategic directions- Ensuring effective implementation – the national infrastructure for prevention
- Conclusion – a call to action
- References
- Acknowledgements
First phase (2010–2013)
1. Make tobacco products significantly more expensive
- Ensure that the average price of a packet of 30 cigarettes is at least $20 (in 2008 $ terms) within three years
- Contribute to developing and implementing international agreements and a national strategy to combat the illicit trade of tobacco
2. Increase the frequency, reach and intensity of social marketing campaigns
- Develop and implement effective and sustained national social marketing campaigns through COAG tobacco initiative and coordinated by NPA
- Design messages and place media to ensure reach with young smokers and socially disadvantaged groups
3. End all remaining forms of advertising and promotion of tobacco products
- Legislate to eliminate all remaining forms of tobacco promotion, including, as feasible, through new and emerging forms of media
- Amend legislation nationally and in all states and territories to ensure that tobacco is out-of-sight in retail outlets
- Eliminate the promotion of tobacco products through design of packaging
- Amend Tobacco Advertising Prohibition Act 1992 to require that no tobacco product may be sold except in packaging of a shape, size, material and colour prescribed by government
- Amend Trade Practices CPIS (Tobacco) Regulations 2004 to specify exact requirements for plain packaging
4. Eliminate exposure to second-hand smoke in public places
- Amend current legislation to:
- Ensure smoking is prohibited in any public places where children are likely to be exposed
- Ensure children are not exposed to tobacco smoke when travelling in cars
- Protect against exposure to second-hand smoke in workplaces, including outdoor areas
5. Regulate manufacturing and further regulate packaging and supply of tobacco products
- Improve consumer information related to tobacco products
- Mandate standard plain packaging of all tobacco products to ensure that design features of the pack in no way reduce the prominence or impact of prescribed government warnings
- Automatically review and upgrade warnings on tobacco packages at least every three years, with the Chief Medical Officer to have the capacity to require amendments and issue additional warnings of new and emerging risks in between
- Tighten and enforce legislation to eliminate sales to minors and any form of promotion at retail level
- Give government power to regulate design, contents and maximum emissions for tobacco and related products, and establish a regulatory body with responsibility for specifying required disclosure to government, labelling and any other communication to consumers
- Investigate the feasibility of legal action by governments and others against tobacco companies
6. Ensure all smokers in contact with health services are encouraged and supported to quit, especially pregnant women and their partners, and people living with chronic disease
- Ensure all state- or territory-funded healthcare services (general, maternity and psychiatric) are smoke-free, protecting staff, patients and visitors from exposure to second-hand smoke both indoors and on facility grounds
- Increase availability of Quitline services, and ensure that Quitlines are resourced to respond to projected demand from media campaigns
- Ensure that nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is affordable for all those for whom it is clinically appropriate
7. Work in partnership with Indigenous groups to boost efforts to reduce smoking and exposure to tobacco among Indigenous Australians
- Establish multi-component community-based tobacco control projects that are locally developed and delivered
- Enhance social marketing campaigns for Indigenous smokers ensuring a ‘twin track’ approach of using existing effective mainstream campaigns complemented by Indigenous-specific campaign elements
- Provide training to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers to improve skills in the provision of smoking cessation advice and in developing community-based tobacco control programs
- Place specialist Tobacco Control Workers in Indigenous community health organisations to build capacity at the local health service level to develop and deliver tobacco control activities
8. Boost efforts to discourage smoking among people in other highly disadvantaged groups
- Target surveillance and enforcement of sales-to-minors legislation in disadvantaged areas
- Target promotion aimed at encouraging GPs and other health professionals located in disadvantaged areas to refer to Quitlines
- Place the majority of any poster/outdoor or mobile advertising in highly disadvantaged neighbourhoods
- Increase efforts to discourage smoking among people living with, or at risk of, mental illness and mental health disorders
- Ensure all state-funded human services agencies and correctional facilities (adult and juvenile) are smoke-free and provide appropriate cessation supports
9. Assist parents and educators to discourage tobacco use and protect young people from second-hand smoke
- Convey the message that parents can help – by quitting smoking; by making their homes smoke-free; by choosing appropriate films, videos and games; and by making it clear that they do not want their children to smoke for the sake of their health.
- Make smoking a classifiable element in movies and videos
10. Ensure that the public, media, politicians and other opinion leaders remain aware of the need for sustained and vigorous action to discourage tobacco use
- Ensure that the public is constantly alerted to information about tobacco and its impact arising from new research findings
11. Ensure implementation and measure progress against and towards targets
- Establish a National Tobacco Strategy Steering Committee
- Address the current gaps in the developed surveillance system on tobacco to enable governments to assess whether adequate progress is being made to ensure that targets will be met
Second phase (2014–2018) and third phase (2018–2020)
Work in the second and third phase will include a continuing strong focus on population measures to discourage smoking, together with increasing emphasis on programs and services for disadvantaged groups and continuing smokers who have been unable to quit.Taxation
- Further increase price of cigarettes to keep pace with international best practice
- Implement and enforce measures to prevent increases in illicit trade
Social marketing
- Continue social marketing campaigns, including in new forms of media and with increasing focus on disadvantaged groups
Legislation
- Enforce and introduce legislative changes to restrict promotion of tobacco products
- Enforce and if necessary tighten legislation that protects against exposure to second-hand smoke in public places
- Restrict the number and type of outlets from which tobacco products may be sold
- Refine systems to warn consumers of new and emerging health risks associated with smoking; refine requirements for disclosure to government and consumers about constituents of tobacco products
- Refine legislative requirements concerning product constituents, design and emissions in line with international research and practice
Health system and program implementation
- Continue to subsidise cost-effective treatments for smoking cessation
- Expand delivery modes for Quitline services
- Improve advice to smokers (provided by Quitlines and health professionals and in educational materials) based on research and smoking trends
- Expand and strengthen programs to ensure that health professionals are trained, prompted, supported and remunerated to consistently identify and encourage and support smokers to quit
- Assess the effectiveness of approaches to reduce young people’s exposures to smoking in movies
Interventions for disadvantaged groups
- Assess effectiveness of approaches with Indigenous communities; review and refine strategies as required
- Expand programs for people living with mental illness, including those in institutional care, clients of out-patient and community-based services, and people with mental health problems who are not in contact with health systems
- Expand programs to prevent uptake and encourage cessation of smoking in low SES neighbourhoods
International development
- Continue to assist in developing guidelines to help countries to comply with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and advise and assist neighbouring countries in the Asia-Pacific region
- Promote tobacco control through overseas aid programs