Labor’s $15 million commitment to the National Tobacco Strategy will help ensure tobacco control policy translates into action to reduce the enormous human and economic cost of almost one in five Australian adults smoking, The Cancer Council Australia said today.
Chief Executive Officer Professor Ian Olver said The Cancer Council Australia was calling on all political parties to support direct funding of the National Tobacco Strategy, which was endorsed by all governments in Australia but needed an integrated national implementation plan.
“The National Tobacco Strategy is a very good intergovernmental policy platform, containing a range of evidence-based measures to reduce the burden of tobacco use in Australia,” Professor Olver said.
“But the strategy needs an integrated implementation plan, as jurisdictions currently take an ad hoc approach to putting the policy into practice.
“By contributing $15 million over the next three years to fund key elements of the strategy, a Rudd Government could boost the national effort to reduce smoking and work in a more coordinated way with state and territory governments.”
Professor Olver said smoking caused 15,500 deaths in Australia each year and was by far the single largest cause of cancer mortality, with almost 8000 smoking-related cancer deaths in 2003.
He said he hoped Labor would discuss how best to allocate the $15 million with non-government organisations like the Cancer Councils, with their extensive networks of public health and clinical professionals, and with state and territory governments, consistent with Kevin Rudd’s plan to build preventative health investment into the Australian Health Care Agreements.
One option would be a collaborative approach to re-invigorating the National Tobacco Campaign (“Every cigarette is doing you damage”), the highly successful national advertising campaign run in the late 1990s in partnership with the jurisdictions.
“Funding for the strategy could also enable government to regulate tobacco products and ensure that any communication about cigarettes – including about their contents or emissions – is evidence-based, complete and in the public interest,” Professor Olver said.
“As well as helping to prevent non-smokers from becoming addicted, these measures would be particularly helpful to more than half of Australia’s smokers who want to quit but struggle with their addiction.”
MEDIA CONTACT:
Paul Grogan, 0409 456 727; paul.grogan@cancer.org.au