Quitline

Um, and we also need to consider the fact that of the 5.6% of Australians who are smoking daily, 90% of them are desperately trying to quit.

So we need to make sure that like in Queensland when you pick up the phone to the Quitline, you get access to free combination nicotine replacement therapy.

That's a measure that the federal government needs to do and Jim Chalmers also needs to consider the idea of reso- re- resourcing enforcement more so when I speak to states and territories a lot, it's quite hard to um, have a sustainable workforce for enforcement.

When they get 12 month kind of funding arrangements with the federal government, it needs to be longer term and it needs to be more and it needs to be done alongside those demand reduction strategies too.

I think if the, if the government was serious about a comprehensive approach, which they should be, we need to see much more investment in public education campaigns.

And that's not just for, in light of the illicit trade and how widespread it is at the moment, that's not even just for people to quit smoking and tell them about the harms of smoking, but it's also to stop the general population from taking it up in the first place.

And we've been calling on the federal government for a number of years now to lift that, um, that money that's being spent in that space, bring people to Quitline off the back of some of these campaigns, and make sure that they're resourcing nicotine replacement therapy to support the 90% of smokers who are desperately wanting to quit.

Well, Laura Hunter, chief executive of the Australian Council on Smoking and Health, thank you so much for joining us.