Today I’ve joined the Maori Affairs Select Committee in Christchurch to hear further submissions on their inquiry into the affects of tobacco on Maori.
Although there is a huge number of organisations submitting, there is a very clear theme: That New Zealand should have a target of becoming smoke-free by 2020.
Today in particular we have heard a lot of calls for prohibition as part of a package of initiatives to reduce smoking rates. I’m not yet convinced the benefits outweigh the negative aspects of prohibition.
But what it is time to do is look at a broader spectrum of options to reducing smoking rates.
Recently Parliament increased tobacco excise tax. It was another step in the right direction. However what we are being told is that taxation is just a small part of the answer.
Key initiatives that keep coming up include:
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Banning tobacco displays
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Plain packaging
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Increasing funding for quit smoking programmes
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Licensing tobacco retailers
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Legalising less harmful alternatives like e-cigarettes
I reckon the submitters are right. It’s time to pick up the pace. It’s also time to shift some of the attention off measures that penalise smokers (like tax) and onto things that will hit the industry and retailers a bit harder.
We’ve done well over the last 20-30 years but change has been slow. Should we continue the incremental changes or be really bold about eradicating the avoidable damage and costs associated with tobacco?
“Legalising less harmful alternatives like e-cigarettes”
They’re illegal?
Well, that’s Labour being fairly bold: banning smoking within ten years.
But it hardly helps Phil Goff in his attempt to bury the party’s strong nanny-state image. Banning all cigarettes would fit in well with the view that a large part of the electorate has that “Labour wants to tell people what to do”, and “Labour thinks it knows best”. The idea that “personal behaviour is best controlled by the state” obviously still runs strong in the new caucus.
Well, that’s Labour being fairly bold: banning smoking within ten years.
Pretty sure he didn’t say that.
@ Bryce Edwards, you clearly prefer Key’s new Bully State to the Nanny State. I guess we should relax the state controlled personal behaviour of putting on a seat belt too? Most cars have air bags these days anyway.
Nice attempt to be deliberately misleading there Bryce. Did you not read the bit where I said I’m not convinced about the benefits of prohibition?
Let me be stronger: I don’t think I’ll ever be convinced about the benefits of prohibition!
StephenR – Products that contain nicotine are classified under the Medcines Act (with the exception of tobacco!!!) and therefore are treated like medcines. There is some debate about the legal status of e-cigarettes depending on which bit of legislation you look at.
If we want to sanction the sale of e-cigarettes and, specifically, the nicotine cartridges there needs to be a tidy up.
I’m against the prohibition idea as I do think it interferes with personal liberty.
I hate smoking, especially passive smoking and rude smokers who would happily smoke all over you. However, I think that people should have the option of giving up their way. I also think it would be damaging to tourism – I really can’t see anyone wanting to give up smoking or taking up patches just so they can get through the ordeal of abstinence while here.
@jennifer – no I have definitely have no preference for National’s “bully state” either. There’s nothing leftwing about either Labour or National’s authoritarian interventions in personal behaviour.
@Iain Lees-Galloway – you effectively said you are considering the arguments in favour of prohibition, despite not yet being convinced. I’m pleased to see you qualify that now by making a ban sound unlikely. Yet, if you want all smoking to be totally eradicated by 2020 (only nine years away!) how else can you possible hope to achieve that without heavy-handed interventions such as the prohibition option you raised in your blog post. You seem to be being *deliberately* disingenuous!
Bryan
Target is smokefree by 2020. Do you truly believe the only way to influence change sin behaviour is to bring in a law totally banning something?
@Bryce Edwards – Given that 80% of smoker want to quit I think that if we managed to overcome the fact that it takes a smoker on average 14 attempts to quit we could very nearly get there.
Try looking at the things I DO want to do rather than the one thing I don’t want to do. Any thoughts about whether or not those would work as a package?
@Iain Lees-Galloway – OK, fair enough. Good luck with that, it’s a worthy target. But nonetheless, my feeling is that regardless of the merits and methods of achieving your target, don’t you think that such a campaign is counterproductive to regenerating the Labour Party brand and the negative so-called nanny-state associations that damaged Labour so badly in 2008?
Spud, you’ve raised an excellent point about the tourism factor and is one that should rightly be considered.
@Bryce Edwards – Nope because nothing in there deminishes personal freedom or choice.
Actually the only thing that does that is the addiction!
Enough of this. I want to discuss how we reduce the harm caused by tobacco.
I have two younger friends who are trying for a fourth time to give up (fourth time in 18 months), neither of them will take up the opportunity to do the government subsidised patches, because one says they were awful when they tried, and the other wont try on that basis. I guess my point is, Iain, that they both believe that their failures to give up are because deep down they didnt want to give up, enough. I dont know how we can further encourage people to phone 0800 numbers to get support.
Like in most things, prevention is better than cure.
Well Iain, for a start we need to look at a different approach to what the MoH is currently doing. Patches do not work. Telling young kids that smoking is bad for you does not work. The price increase has not worked (so far and I doubt it will) and people forget that there is a small increase in excise tax every year but the number of smokers has stayed constant at 24% for years. I know of a company retailing fags that has had a boomer week since the tax increase and the prices went up.
I am sure you have good intentions but a new approach is needed as the options you have outlined will make little or no difference. Plain packaging will be great for BAT as they know that then nobody would change brands, for instance.
One suggestion to help those who do want to stop is to spend the subsidies on Champix, hypnotherapy and e-fags rather than waste the bucks on NRT. Also, we need to counter what BAT are doing which is, basically, to start making smoking uncool and unsexy.
To make a difference we would be better off without politicians and bureaucrats trying to sort this. Instead, spend the money on Saatchi & Saatchi.
@ Iain “Did you not read the bit where I said I’m not convinced about the benefits of prohibition?” Sorry, I must’ve misread.
Iain Lees-Galloway said: “Let me be stronger: I don’t think I’ll ever be convinced about the benefits of prohibition!”
Why not, what are the benefits of smoking..?
My idea would be to introduce an amendment to smoking legislation which raises the age of purchase of cigarettes, one year on April 1 every year, combined with steady increases in Customs and Police funding to intercept and enforce the new purchase age and it’s likely consequences…
Only one lifetime till cigarettes in museums then…
@Loota – Agreed, it’s amazing how many people still take up smoking when the effects of it have been known for decades.
My Grandfather and I smoke a cigar every Christmas day together. He has done so for the past sixty years. Neither of us smoke although I think he may have in the forties.
)
(You can’t blame him though as back then Doctors would often promote smoking
Anyways I think it would be a sad day when New Zealanders can’t enjoy the occasional celebratory cigar at a reasonable price. However I do strongly support the continued fight against chain smoking and believe continued tax increases are necessary. I think twenty bucks a pack would be a good start!
I’m no so sure about banning Tobacco displays and licensing retailers though. These would probably only have a small effect on people buying cigarettes, however the compliance costs for small retailers would be significant. Small dairy owners generally work very hard for a very meagre wage. It’s unfair to impose further costs to these small businesses, we should be targeting the tobacco companies instead!
Why not, what are the benefits of smoking..?
You’ve never heard of people enjoying a cigarette after dinner? As a way of calming down? Flavour?
I’m sorry I can’t think of anything new to add to what you have written Iain, but I do agree that more emphasis should be on other ways of discouraging smoking besides tax increases. I hope that tax increases don’t increase the chances of having a gun pointed in my face at work, but if this happens, then I’m not in favour of tax increases.
How about we treat cigarette and tobacco retailers in the same way that we treat bars that sell alcohol to under 18s? Take away their ability to sell for a period of time.
“You’ve never heard of people enjoying a cigarette after dinner? As a way of calming down? Flavour?”
Cigarettes increase stress levels, anxiety, etc…
I don’t think anyone would be seeking enjoyment or “flavour-country” if they weren’t introduced to the enjoyment/flavour (or in reality addiction) during formative years (when one lacks the ability to analyse decisions over a potential lifetime habit) where it is social appealing and requires one to force a few packs down…
The only company really targeting the ASU30 market is BAT and its subsidary Tasman Supplies. A while back they cut the wholesalers out of the market and now one has to buy direct from BAT. This means that they know exactly how much stock is sold at each reseller and they pay out the discounts accordingly. This is why resellers have the big BAT cabinets highly visable as the more they sell the higher the discount. Apparently it also boosted the BAT bottom line by $80 odd million.
Although they are not allowed to advertise, they do a lot of “marketing”. Needless to say, this is almost totally aimed at the ASU30 demographic. So one way to make a difference would be to limit BAT to only supplying stock to wholesalers ( Gilmores, Toops, etc.) and to stop the defacto advertising that they do. This is a lot easier than targeting the poor smokers and resellers and could actually make a difference. FWIW.
Why not place a limit on the amount of tar in cigarettes on public sale (it’s the tobacco tar which is the carcinogen), that way those who continue to smoke – as nicotine addicts, face less health risk.
Otherwise, simply require people to register as addicts to buy smokes (and don’t allow anyone currently under 18 to register).
I like the tar idea
The addicts’ register is an interesting idea – bound to be backlash. 
Here some advice from a smoker – full time – and I just hate it when my 4 year old sees the TV and says daddy you should not smoke, or my 3yr old playing with my cigs and worse of all breaking them.
1/ Tax grabs – lets call it what it is people. Its just a way of collecting revenue from people who have no ability to avoid it – to those who think this is a good move look up the dictionary for “addiction” dumbarse.
2/ I do agree with Jeremy M – to help the non smoking kids a raising age limit would be good, But I would also change the retailer to Pharmacy Only, and possibly licensed. This way smokers and tourists and immigrants could access the product but only 9-5, the advertising boxes would likely be hidden behind the ads for the patches, the age limits would be better enforced, the youngsters would still get some, but hopefully not enough to get addicted.
3/ Yes I have tried to quit, every time I return like a yo yo diet, smoking more than before trying. The one thing that did seem to work was hypnosis, unfortunately, I told my partner what I was doing, and while I came back relaxed, she went ape, yelling screaming and saying I was stressing out when I was quiet and relaxed (don’t ask?). I then went out got some and she calmed down instantly. It does take support. Patches halved my daily take, but only when wearing them, nothing (except Hypnosis) dealt with the habits/rituals re hands, smoking chair etc. The most embarrassing bit of this is that I gave up at age 11 cold turkey and swore off (hated) smokes, until I hit Varsity (blame drinking, but started that at 15, picked up smoking 20).
4/ Quit programs probably don’t work as I want to quit, but I hate to say there are definite benefits to smoking (not just the medical). There are parts I enjoy, in an ideal world I not quit, it would just be healthy and cheap.
My plan is to go to the Dr, and I have to lie, and get hold of the magic pill. I don’t know the name, but I have heard the pack a day smokers do not get this treatment, but the 3 pack a day do. Cant remember the name, but apparently it fries your receptors so the nicotine cannot bind, and so get no hit from the smoke or patch (or cookie). It basically forces the smoker to go cold turkey and all that goes with it. This means the foul mood, itchy feeling, sleeplessness, nervous hands. The big difference is that nothing you do will give you the hit, so smokes start to taste bad, and the association gets broken very fast. The ex smoker I talked with had also tried many times to quit, record quit was 1pm. He was age 14-45 3 packs a day. He was not enjoying his smokes at day 2, day 3 he had three but didn’t finish them and had 1 on day 5 and day 6 he was smokefree.
I would love to see more access, advertising and subsidies for this treatment (cost $500ish but less with CSC).
Sounds great to me but I need to find out more.
Brilliant comment, Jeremy
, good to see a dose of reality on the thread. 
People have the right to smoke.
however, they should have to pay for that right, I like the idea of taxing the hell out of smoking just as the govt taxes the hell out of petrol. I’m not a fan of “plain packaging”- it will give the cigarette companies the ability to put shoddy product into their “brands” so I’d keep their current ability to advertise. Licensing and making it so that only over 18s/ checkout supervisors can sell cigarettes and tobacco would also be very prudent- far fewer dairies and 24/7 stores would risk selling to a minor if a new fine twice the size of our current one was put into place. A littering fine for smokers who throw their ends on the streets would be a nice touch …
Making it compulsory for cigarettes to be sold WITH nicotine gum could make it far easier for smokers to gradually quit
The problem is that there are passive smokers and “binge” or “chain smokers just as their are people who indulge in alcohol and people who go and get wasted everynight and day, there is a big ass hell lines between the two.
My favoured solution is to ban cigarettes but keep pipe and chewing tobacco, cigarillos and cigars for several reasons:
1. From what I gather there are far fewer cancers to deal with
2. they cost a lot more for a lot less and people who buy cigars and cigarillos expect to pay that sum
3. cigars are generally sold separately or in 3s (I’ve only noticed one pace in auckland that sells boxes and well…if you’ve got 2200$ on hand…)
4. a cigar or pipe from a “gangster” perspective looks far less cool
5. Cigars are swish
6. pipes give people with beards and double breasted suits an air of wisdom
7. Aesthetics – hell, If Cannabis ever got legalised I’d imagine it would be sold in cigar or cigarillo form so there’d be an easy transistion with the aesthetics of it
8. luxury goods tax
- Right?cool? awesome!
@Jeremy
The fact the treatment ‘fries’ a part of your brain is probably why they keep it to the 50+ a day people
“I would love to see more access, advertising and subsidies for this treatment (cost $500ish but less with CSC).” Sounds like a bargain in the scheme of things. Having a fried brain versus cancer… or emphesema, or other lung related diseases, and having kids in a totally smokefree home, must be a bargain for families and the rest of us.
Jeremy…… I believe the drug you are talking about is Champix. Available on script from your GP at a cost of $10 per day but worth it. You do not need to be a 50 a day smoker. Champix somehow blocks the receptors in your brain so you lose the urge to smoke and they don’t taste very nice. A brilliant drug for anyone serious about quitting but probably not as quick or with the side effects as you have been told.
Stephensmikm said:
Well, its a pretty soft right and very rigidly controlled. Maybe even more like a privilege or an indulgence (e.g. cigars, cigarillos).
As you have pointed out there are plenty of ways to control this “right” even further and more rigidly.
I agree with Loota, people need to re-examine the definition of a “right” to get smoking to fit. It’s a privilege or benefit but not a right. Rights are things like, the right to shelter, to food, to water, to free speech. God forbid we become like the US where a “right” to free speech includes smoking, or bearing arms (from pioneer days) is an excuse for a current “right” to carry semi automatic weapons.
lol or the right to shoot anyone who has wondered on to your front lawn.
Then there’s the right to have ten million homeless people in the richest country in the world…or thirty million people with very minimal access to healthcare…luckily a few things are being done about that now.
go ahead and prohibit it just like you do with all bloody drugs, take the neandethal approach and lock people in cages for doing something you don’t like.
This should only be applicable if you also prohibit alcohol.
prohibiting drugs and increasing excise tax just means you send drugs underground making it even more available to those you are trying to restrict them from.
Grow some brains already…
@Stephen – People are already paying a lot for their right to smoke. I say let them have their vice and quit when they want to and not when they are priced out of it.
- The fact that some people have to fry their brains to get off the stuff just proves how strong this addiction is and how harsh it is to try and force people to quit via heavy handed government.
@Tracey – why not have a licensing system for smokers, they have to work with lung cancer / emphesema patients for six months before they have a licence to buy.
I hate smoking and would be happy if everyone quit tomorrow, but I don’t like the idea of these people being told that they are not allowed to do something and that they will have leglislation to stop them.
@Mark – agreed.
well I just think it would be nice for the streets not to be littered with butts, ash is far easier to cleanup!
Although it is a right, it is a right that has to be enjoyed sparingly and if you make that happen then everyone is better off, passive, 1 pack a month/year smokers would be negligible decimating the number of cancer patients to our health system whileas the 2 pack a day habits of many equal a terrible burden that we NZers have to pay
@Spud I like your idea on the working with sufferers before purchase but I think it’d be better for the suppliers rather than the smokers
I agree with you about the butts, if there are ashtrays available then they should use them. I heard something about butts getting into gutters and eventually travelling out to sea
I share your view that it would be nice to see less smoking but still don’t see how it’s the government’s right to dictate to people how much they can smoke.
Perhaps everytime someone buys a pack of cigarettes, they sign a form acknowledging they wont accept any health care from the state at all… shopkeepers send these to a new department and they get logged on computers, and when the smokers turn up to state hospitals they are wheeled back out. It’s their right to smoke afterall
Not my right to pay for their treatment, I mean think of the treatment they could buy instead of their cigarettes 
C’mon Spud, you really can’t see “how it’s the government’s right to dictate to people…FILL IN THE BLANK…
@Tracey – Hi
No liberty equals no life 
To take things a bit further the state, in the name of the health budget, could dictate the diets, bedtimes, exercise plans, work hours etc of everyone.
there’s no change to the amount they can buy- they just have to weigh up whether spending 30$ for 5 cigarillos or 3 cigars is worth it
@tracey – I’m not sure about that…People who smoke one pack and then are screwed for the rest of their lives under that idea…
I do like the idea of someone whose has been smoking non stop for two years over a pack a day being restricted on health care though
satephenm my tongue was firmly in my cheek.
Spud do you really believe you live an unregulated life now?
Th eidea, courtesy of Mr Mills, is that you can do whatever you like until you harm others. I am afraid in our modern society that must include harming their chequebook.
If your propensity for junk food gives you food allergies, obesity, and other related problems, who pays for it? Myself and other selected tax payers… and so on.
I’m an unpaid tax collector for the Government every 2 months… They brought in GST and made ME collect it for them… boo hoo me
“Spud do you really believe you live an unregulated life now?” No, I just don’t want it to get any worse
“If your propensity for junk food gives you food allergies, obesity, and other related problems, who pays for it? Myself and other selected tax payers” Wonderful social contract inn’t it?
FYI possums. The actual costs to the health budget of smokers is between $300 and $400 million. The tax received from smokers is now around $1.7 billion. This is a benefit from smoking.
@John bt
imagine how much more in benefit is waiting then from higher taxes!
The latest figures I’ve seen are from the Health Sponsorship Council. They estimate the total cost of smoking to be $1.7 billion per annum. That includes health costs, lost productivity, benefit payments etc. The excise tax take is around $1.1 billion.
So at best you could say smoking income and expenditure is break-even for the government, but it actually looks like there is an overall economic cost to the country.
Oh yeah, and it kills 5000 people a year.