Sixty-six body bags are being laid out on the lawns of Parliament House, one for each Australian who dies every single day from tobacco use. The body bags appeared ahead of the first Senate inquiry hearing into Australia's illegal tobacco crisis, scheduled for Monday.
Why the Protest?
Health advocates made the call to stage this protest because words alone were not cutting it anymore. They needed Members of Parliament to actually see what 66 dead people looked like, laid out in black bags on the grass in front of the building where the nation makes its decisions.
Context of the Senate Inquiry
So why now? Because the Senate is hearing from Australian Border Force officials, medical experts, and the Cancer Council about how to tackle illegal tobacco flooding into Australia. Tobacco lobbyists want the government to lower cigarette excise to disrupt illegal traders. Essentially, they argue that if smokes are made cheaper, people will not buy the illegal products. It is an argument that sounds clever for about five seconds, then falls apart.
Laura Hunter, the chief executive of the Australian Council on Smoking and Health, called the proposal a "self-serving red herring." She stated: "If you are comfortable making all cigarettes cheaper, you are comfortable with more people dying from smoking. You do not tackle a public health crisis by engaging in a race to the bottom with criminals, making Australia's deadliest product cheaper and more accessible."
When cigarettes are cheaper, more people take them up, people already addicted smoke more, and fewer people quit. As per Daily Mail, quoting Hunter, there are over 40,000 outlets selling tobacco in Australia, far more than supermarkets, petrol stations, and pharmacies combined.
Health Impact of Smoking
Smoking causes at least 16 types of cancer, including lung, mouth, liver, bladder, bowel, and kidney cancer. It is not a vice that affects only the smoker. The health system bears the cost, and families suffer. That is what those 66 bags represent on the Parliament lawn—not some abstract number, but real data.
