Nat/act/nzf 2023

[Blue Skies]

Disbelief NZF Associate Minister of Health looking at putting a 3 year freeze on tobacco tax when outside the cancelled Smokefree legislation, the increasing cost of cigarettes is biggest deterrent to people starting smoking, & continues to cause large numbers of smokers to quit.

Incredible & not only that but denying to RNZ she had looked at this until caught out by a leak showing she had signed off on a decision paper asking advice about exactly this.
Big trust issues for Casey Costello.

How bad is it, when you have the Associate Minister of Health actually putting the profits of the Tobacco industry which kills 5,000 people a year, 13 every day from smoking, above the health of NZ'ers.

Beyond comprehension a Minister could be so stupid, ignore all the empirical evidence, in 2024!

Or, is it a ruthlessness, they don't want more smokers to quit because they need the money from the tobacco excise tax to pay for tax cuts & election promises?

[blackcap]

Disbelief NZF Associate Minister of Health looking at putting a 3 year freeze on tobacco tax when outside the cancelled Smokefree legislation, the increasing cost of cigarettes is biggest deterrent to people starting smoking, & continues to cause large numbers of smokers to quit.

Incredible & not only that but denying to RNZ she had looked at this until caught out by a leak showing she had signed off on a decision paper asking advice about exactly this.
Big trust issues for Casey Costello.

How bad is it, when you have the Associate Minister of Health actually putting the profits of the Tobacco industry which kills 5,000 people a year, 13 every day from smoking, above the health of NZ'ers.

Beyond comprehension a Minister could be so stupid, ignore all the empirical evidence, in 2024!

Or, is it a ruthlessness, they don't want more smokers to quit because they need the money from the tobacco excise tax to pay for tax cuts & election promises?

O stop being so sanctimonious. Do you know how much a packet of cigarettes costs these days? Its the poor that are disadvantaged the most and this causes poverty. For some people a cigarette is their only crutch. I am not saying we should encourage smoking, but the price and excise is ridiculous. People should be free to make up their own minds without governement interference.
I don't see any tax on sugar which kills far more people (diabetes and complications, heart disease etc) than smoking does these days. Stop being so self righteous.

[Bjauck]

O stop being so sanctimonious. Do you know how much a packet of cigarettes costs these days? Its the poor that are disadvantaged the most and this causes poverty. For some people a cigarette is their only crutch. I am not saying we should encourage smoking, but the price and excise is ridiculous. People should be free to make up their own minds without governement interference.
I don't see any tax on sugar which kills far more people (diabetes and complications, heart disease etc) than smoking does these days. Stop being so self righteous.

BAT. Big Tobacco. We see why the Coalition have scrapped Smokefree NZ now.

Give the poor a little bit of joy if they want a fag. They can’t afford a house these days. Gangs and crime are getting worse in poorer areas. The rich have the untaxed capital gains, let the poor have cheaper excise on a full tar unfiltered fag. Income earners will be hit with yet another tax hike to pay for the health costs and lack of a CGT. Dying early would be a blessing because it is easier than tacking the causes of poverty?

Nanny state should butt out. We are all free to read medical journals, understand them and make up our own minds.

[blackcap]

BAT. Big Tobacco. We see why the Coalition have scrapped Smokefree NZ now.

Give the poor a little bit of joy if they want a fag. They can’t afford a house these days. Gangs and crime are getting worse in poorer areas. The rich have the untaxed capital gains, let the poor have cheaper excise on a full tar unfiltered fag. Income earners will be hit with yet another tax hike to pay for the health costs and lack of a CGT. Dying early would be a blessing because it is easier than tacking the causes of poverty?

Nanny state should butt out. We are all free to read medical journals, understand them and make up our own minds.

That is not what I am saying. But for many the cost is prohibitive and really does cut into the budget at the expense of other items including looking after kids.

Why this big focus on tobacco, when there are other things that should really be tackled.

By the way, its not only a poor issue, smoking goes through all demographics, its the poor that do smoke that really feel it.

I don't buy the health costs argument associated with smoking, drinking possible costs a hell of a lot more.

[Ggcc]

BAT. Big Tobacco. We see why the Coalition have scrapped Smokefree NZ now.

Give the poor a little bit of joy if they want a fag. They can’t afford a house these days. Gangs and crime are getting worse in poorer areas. The rich have the untaxed capital gains, let the poor have cheaper excise on a full tar unfiltered fag. Income earners will be hit with yet another tax hike to pay for the health costs and lack of a CGT. Dying early would be a blessing because it is easier than tacking the causes of poverty?

Nanny state should butt out. We are all free to read medical journals, understand them and make up our own minds.

Interesting fact the majority of people who worked at BAT in Napier were not smokers. I used to support ASH and their way of thinking, until I saw how they got things so wrong in describing what BAT put into their cigarettes.

[Blue Skies]

O stop being so sanctimonious. Do you know how much a packet of cigarettes costs these days? Its the poor that are disadvantaged the most and this causes poverty. For some people a cigarette is their only crutch. I am not saying we should encourage smoking, but the price and excise is ridiculous. People should be free to make up their own minds without governement interference.
I don't see any tax on sugar which kills far more people (diabetes and complications, heart disease etc) than smoking does these days. Stop being so self righteous.

If sugar killed half of all its users, like tobacco does, we would have almost half the population dying each & every year!
There are currently about 350,000 people still smoking, if they don't quit - smoking will kill half of them & its entirely preventable.
Sugar does not kill anything like the same percentage of users as tobacco, where on earth did you get that idea from?

Sanctimonious! What do you think a HEALTH Minister's job is ? Being paid $350,000 a year plus perks, to sit in their Beehive office with dozens of support staff, & eat lunch & go home?


If you're a taxpayer, a very significant portion of the tax you pay, goes into funding our Health system.

The old argument people should be responsible for & free to make up their own minds about sabotaging their own health doesn't wash when they won't take responsibility for the resulting $2 billion per year other taxpayers will be paying for their healthcare under our free publicly funded Healthcare System. (and thats' not taking into account other costs like dying early, lost work productivity, economic impact on family )

You can't have a free taxpayer funded Healthcare System without some guard rails around trying to reduce people sabotaging their health, or reckless or irresponsible behaviour.

That aside, putting the cost of cigarettes right out of reach is a proven way of successfully motivating smokers to quit.

[mistaTea]

O stop being so sanctimonious. Do you know how much a packet of cigarettes costs these days? Its the poor that are disadvantaged the most and this causes poverty. For some people a cigarette is their only crutch. I am not saying we should encourage smoking, but the price and excise is ridiculous. People should be free to make up their own minds without governement interference.
I don't see any tax on sugar which kills far more people (diabetes and complications, heart disease etc) than smoking does these days. Stop being so self righteous.

Really interesting post BC.

A month or so back I purchased a pack of cigarettes. I have not been a 'smoker' for about 20 years I guess, but my dad still enjoys cigarettes, so on the rare occassion he makes the trek to Auckland I get a packet and enjoy a few cigarettes with him.

Anyway, a pack of 20 B&H cost me about $44. My jaw literally dropped, and the guy at the Dairy told me how lucky I was, because he was about to make the CPI adjustment the next day and they were going to go up another $2 or $3!

I think a lot of this gets back to making an effort to look at an issue from more than one angle (just like the talk around TOW). I just feel a lot of people leap to jumping up and down and decrying that the sky is falling before waiting to see what actually happens and after considering the issue from different perspectives. After all, the Associate Health Minister has only asked for some advice on the issue at this stage! So we can afford to take a more measured assessment.

If your sole focus is on health outcomes, then anything other than ever increasing punative measures against tobacco products is going to disappoint. And clearly tobacco smoke is unhealthy, increasing the chance of cancer and other ailments. That has been well researched, and the vast majoroty of adults who continue to purchase the product are well aware.

So that is one angle.

Some of the other things to consider are:

1. It has not been about recouping costs from smokers due to extra healthcare they need (on average) for a long time. The excise tax raised is around 4 to 5 times greater than even the most liberal accounting of 'costs'. That means the State is coercing adults away from buying a perfectly legal product. Which is the definition of Nanny State - and there is an argument that the State should not do this.
2. It continues to dispproportianately impact the poor. They form the highest percentage of smokers, and the cost of smokes is a large percentage of their take home pay. This comes at the expense of decent accomodation, clothing and even food for the kids. We (quite rightly) decry the levels of poverty in our country but then push these tobacco policies to the limit which actually works against our aim of reducing poverty.
3. From a non-smokers POV, you might ask why these people don't just quit. As it is literally crippling them financially. At first glance, a very reasonable question. However, consider this - a lot of familiies in NZ are doing it tougher than a lot of us really realise. These guys aren't planning date nights with their wife at a nice restaurant, upgrades to their car let along trips with the kids to Fiji. Fiji may as well be on the Moon. However, they can buy cigarettes. And they enjoy smoking tobacco as it is a small pleasure they can obtain that helps them get through living in difficult circumstances. It is a perspective we should consider much more before heaping on more costs on these families. Costs which add stress to already fragile families that are higher risk of domestic violence etc.
4. We are at diminishing returns with regards to excise tax anyway. The vast majority of people who were going to quit due to price sensitivity have already done so. The rest either continue to wear the cost or buy illicit tobacco. So the benefits of never ending tax increases are significantly reduced now relative to the costs of continuing down that path.
5. Gangs. Gangs are the only ones benefiting from the price increases now. There can be no doubt that the Tobacco tax policy has enriched gangs, providing another revenue stream for them. Enabling them to buy even fancier gear that helps glamourise their existence, making them an even more attractive prospect for our disadvantaged youth.

So, I do think there are many different angles one could coherently argue their case with regards to tobacco. It is not ridiculous in my view that the government would look to hit the pause button while getting advice on alternative approaches.

[Blue Skies]

You'll have difficulty arguing that increasing the cost of cigarettes has not been successful in significantly helping smokers quit, in all ethnic & socio-economic groups.
Maori down to 17% from 28.6% in 2019
Pacifica down to 6.4% from 20.2% in 2017.

Most smokers want to quit & the increasing cost of a packet of fags is incredibly commonly a trigger point to quit.


More importantly, the other often overlooked angle is we don't want teenagers to take up the habit like we all did in the 60's & 70's when cigarettes were so cheap.
At almost $50 a packet, & no glamorous advertising, no teenager is going to chose to start smoking tobacco & we will end up with a smoke free generation.

When looking at this issue, the extremely addictive nature of the product has to be taken into account. Big tobacco ruthlessly exploited this increasing the amount of nicotine whenever they could to get people hooked.

This highly addictive product kills half its long term users, & leaves almost all the rest with some pretty ghastly health problems, amputations, carcinomas of the tongue, strokes, etc.
There is no other legal product including alcohol & sugar, which is toxic/damaging in even the smallest amounts.
Alcohol in moderation can even have some benefits & our bodies need & can cope with small amounts of sugar.

[ithaka]

You'll have difficulty arguing that increasing the cost of cigarettes has not been successful in significantly helping smokers quit, in all ethnic & socio-economic groups.
Maori down to 17% from 28.6% in 2019
Pacifica down to 6.4% from 20.2% in 2017.

The drop of New Zealand’s overall smoking rate to 8% would place it among some of the world’s lowest prevalences. The most recent OECD average was 16.5%, Australia’s rate is 10.7%, and the UK’s is 13.8%. It’s likely, however, that a substantial portion of New Zealanders quitting smoking may be switching to vaping. According to the latest data, the rise in daily vape users was larger than the drop in daily smokers: 8.3% of adults are now vaping daily, up from 6.2% in the past year.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/...ng-on-the-rise

[mistaTea]

You'll have difficulty arguing that increasing the cost of cigarettes has not been successful in significantly helping smokers quit, in all ethnic & socio-economic groups.
Maori down to 17% from 28.6% in 2019
Pacifica down to 6.4% from 20.2% in 2017.

Most smokers want to quit & the increasing cost of a packet of fags is incredibly commonly a trigger point to quit.

Not arguing that increases to the excise tax has not had an impact on reducing smoking rates - it has.

Just pointing out that the tax increases correspond with large decreases in smoking rates initially, but over time the 'returns' diminish with each additional increase. However, there are other societal issues that result from the increases in excise tax (a number of which I mentioned in my earlier post).

We cannot pretend that those issues don't exist, or aren't that bad.

Good policy is created when it considers all of the aspects, not just a single focus on health.

That does not mean that we should not care about health and just drop all of the taxes etc to give relief to the poor and cut off gang revenue streams. Just because the current way we are doing things is generating some undersirable results does not mean that it automatically follows that we should fix it by going to the opposite extreme.

It does, however, mean that we need to be more thoughtful and regard these issues from different perspectives. We certainly do not want to lose sight of the forest for the trees and immediately start jumping up and down when a Minister has simply asked for some advice.

Also, people do enjoy smoking cigarettes. Some habitually, others socially. And it is a legal product. You claim that it kills half of its users, and I welcome you to supply the evidence for that. The 'big one' for smokers is lung cancer, and about 15% of lifetime smokers will develop lung cancer for males and about 11% for females. That is very significant give the same rate of lung cancer for people who have never smoked is 1.8% male and 1.3% female.

However, far from saying that tobacco nails half of its users, you could also argue that 85% of the males and 89% of the females can enjoy the product over a lifetime and not get lung cancer.

You will point out that there are other risks associated with smoking such as stroke, heart disease etc. And that is fair enough, but I am just pointing out that lung cancer is by far and away the biggest risk to smokers... and the stats are at odds with your claim.

I also think your claims about sugar are not quite right. Obesity death rates have exceeded smoking death rates in a lot of places (I doubt NZ is much different to the UK).

So your effort would be better placed I think jumping up and down about why we have not cranked up the excise tax on sugar. We should lift the price of a can of coke to $10 perhaps to help people get skinny.

If smoking cigarettes is as bad as you say - kills half, and leaves the other half with missing feet, tongues and strokes - then the government should quit pissing around and just ban it immediately for everytone from tomorrow.