What is a Mature Smoking Product Retail Licensing Scheme—A Commentary From Tasmania of Policy and Practice

Abstract

By 2025, all Australian jurisdictions will have a licensing scheme to manage the supply of tobacco. However, there is no national smoking product licensing framework to drive national consistency and enhance tobacco control. There are few published examples of the operation and impact of this tobacco control legislation. This commentary describes the maturation of Tasmania's (TAS) Tobacco Licensing Scheme (the Scheme) and its benefits, strengths, and limitations for current and future tobacco control. A ‘mature scheme’ is a scheme beyond the establishment phase—as is the case for (New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria) that complies with the national recommendations from 2002, used to inform tobacco control policy. The Scheme is legally mandated and requires payment of annual licence fees. It enables government officers to conduct compliance activity on the legal sale of tobacco, monitor the number, distribution, and range of retailers. Initially, it took 2 years to register and conduct compliance activity with all known tobacco retailers. Now, the Scheme enables online applications, requires retail sales reporting, detects illicit tobacco sales, and requires new applicants to undergo police checks. In 2017, the Scheme was extended to e-cigarette sellers. Following a ban on the retail sale of e-cigarettes outside of pharmacies in Australia, the Scheme allowed businesses to surrender unsold products. The Register of sellers has been used in four research studies employing qualitative, spatial, and intervention designs, including a pilot study influencing retailers to stop selling tobacco. Each study has contributed to shaping tobacco control policy. Mature tobacco retail licensing schemes enable governments to oversee legal sales, estimate consumption, and generate data for research that informs future policies. A nationally consistent approach to licensing schemes could include retail laws. Adopting a public health framework is desirable. Such an approach would allow for cross-border investigations to detect and potentially deter illicit product sales. All Australian schemes could monitor tobacco sales, collate data, conduct modelling and intervention studies to reduce tobacco availability. The evidence from these studies can inform policy, plan, and implement retail controls, and in turn reduce smoking for the entire country.