Stephen “The Kouk” Koukoulas may not be able to forecast his way out of a wet paper bag but he has been fighting the good fight against big tobacco for several years now and today claims a significant victory:
Tobacco consumption has plummeted a staggering 17.5 per cent since the plain packaging laws were introduced in late 2012.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
It was just over a year ago that The Australian peddled some convoluted findings about tobacco consumption in the aftermath of the plain packaging laws. Indeed, it the report of 6 June 2014, an article under Christian Kerr’s byline suggested: “tobacco sales volumes increased … last year”.
The facts showed the opposite and consumption of tobacco had fallen in the prior 12 months.
It was a disgraceful effort from Kerr and The Australian to suggest that smoking had increased and after I pointed this out in a blog post here http://thekouk.com/blog/the-australian-s-claim-on-tobacco-go-up-in-smoke.html , there was a tirade of abuse and retribution that was frankly incredible. The likes of Judith Sloan, Henry Ergas, Sinclair Davidson, Jack The Insider and several editorials did there best to slag me personally and muddy the issue with jargon, clap trap and a flood of erroneous comments.
There was Terry McCrann as well as I recall. Here is the chart to back the Kouk up:
I guess you could argue it’s continued a trend but it certainly looks like it’s working to me, eh Terry?
