&gt; <i>First they went after smoking, with that nonsense about plain packaging.</i><p>Plain packaging is nowhere near the first against smoking; it&#x27;s more like the start of the end-game for it. The government has been very open about wanting to get rid of smoking altogether, and has been so for decades. I was at high school in the late &#x27;80s and remember a bloke from Quit saying that they were funded by cigarette taxes, and his job was to put himself out of a job. Punitive taxes and advertising bans long predate plain packaging, as do bans on smoking in hospitality venues.<p>Alcohol isn&#x27;t going to go away any time soon for exactly the same reason negative gearing isn&#x27;t - too many pollies like it for themselves. Alcohol is also a major industry in Australia, unlike tobacco. Similarly, mainstream Australia identifies strongly with a tipple - for example, we like to boast that one of our PMs held a world record for skulling beer. I&#x27;ve never heard any such patriotic murmurings on the topic of tobacco.