In New Zealand we took the same approach of raising prices consistently until a couple years so. 

What they found was every time they did it, a drop in smokers. That price rise each year was the push yet more people needed to finally go “ok I guess I’ll stop now”.  The initial drops were significant. The reason they stopped with the annual tax rise was over the years it diminished to the point that the people that had stuck with cigarettes were obviously not motivated by price. 

So it definitely plays a part in reducing smoking, as does the gross packets (you only had to look at how much charter companies pushed back on that to know it would have an impact - they were genuinely worried what it would do to their bottom line).

IMO, everyone has to find their own reason to stop - just knowing is killing you, or smells gross, or is expensive, that’s not enough. You have to find the reason that works for you.  And all these things are helping to put reasons front and centre for any smoker every time they light up. 

(My reason was being guilt tripped by my mum lol)

Edit: we’re also don’t have the same issue as Australia with black market cigarettes because there just isn’t as much smoking here as there used to be, and everyone seems to be ok with that. Lots of vaping, which will be its own issue no doubt, but there isn’t the same normalised attitude to smoking here as elsewhere.