Last week, new data were released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) suggesting daily smoking prevalence has dropped to a record low of 5.6% in 2025 – down from 8.3% in 2022-23.

Taken at face value, this is the best news in the history of tobacco control in Australia.

But there are reasons for caution. The figures come from a self-report survey, and as the AIHW has previously acknowledged, respondents “tend to underestimate actual consumption levels”, with illicit use particularly undercounted.

When the previous survey ran in 2022–23, most tobacco was still bought legally. But in 2025, the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates 80% of all nicotine products were illicit.

So, the steepest fall in reported smoking in the survey’s history was recorded over exactly the period in which smoking moved underground and became harder to accurately measure.

How bad is the problem?

Regardless of the true smoking rate, the violence and large scale impacts of the illicit tobacco market are now major problems in their own right.

Since 2023, nearly 300 arson attacks linked to the trade have been reported nationwide, alongside countless alleged episodes of extortion and intimidation and several murders.

Australians now spend up to $8.5 billion a year on illicit nicotine – more than on cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin combined.

That makes illicit nicotine one of the largest, and certainly the fastest growing, black markets in Australia’s........

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