Plain packaging was implemented in December, 2010. There was a phase-in period in September. If I recall correctly, it was about a three-month phase-in period.
The national household drug strategy survey is conducted every three years. The data came out in 2013, and then most recently for 2016. There was a big drop between 2010 and 2013, which in public debates was very much associated with the introduction of plain packaging. There was a one-month overlap between those periods.
Certainly the 2016 decline in smoking prevalence fell, moving from 12.8% to 12.2%, which is not statistically significant. Given population growth, the number of smokers in Australia had actually increased.
In terms of policies that have been introduced, graphic health warnings were introduced in Australia in 2006. As a public health exercise and a public information exercise, it was quite valuable. Packets are stored behind the counter and in a case. You can't see them ever. They must be transported from the storeroom to the counter in a bag, so you also can't see them being transported through the store. That was introduced in 2011, if I recall correctly.
There was a 25% increase in the excise on tobacco in 2010. That probably drove the change that we saw between 2010 and 2013. Certainly the decline in prevalence, which is a long-running thing from the early 1990s, stalled. At the same time, if you look at the U.K. over the same time period, vaping became quite popular there, and the prevalence of tobacco cigarettes declined quite precipitously.
There are all sorts of things going on here. Certainly, my critique of the evidence, the data from the national drug strategy survey, and the data from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission survey kind of indicates that plain packaging in and of itself is not having the desired effect. The plain packaging concept itself, the idea of enhancing the noticeability of the graphic warnings, in my opinion, has failed.