Cigarette sales have plummeted since prices rose steeply in May, a survey says.
New Zealanders are smoking around two million fewer cigarettes a week, Auckland researcher Murray Laugesen, for the Smokefree Coalition, has found.
The study compared supermarket sales of loose tobacco and cigarettes in the weeks leading up to the May increase of $1.30 a packet, and in the weeks following.
The sharp drop in sales meant smokers were either cutting back or giving up, Mr Laugesen said.
Previous surveys indicated the drop in smoking would not be a short-term reaction to the price rise, he said.
"For example, in 1991, after the 'mother of all Budgets', smoking fell.
"We monitored cigarette sales closely for a couple of years after that, and they stayed the same ... for every smoker who gives up [after a price rise] and then a couple of months later starts smoking again, there is another who is giving up at the same time because they cannot hack the price rise."
Supermarkets had been selling the equivalent of 12.5 million cigarettes a week, and that had fallen to 10.5 million after the price rise.
Since 1998 new, stronger health warnings had been added to tobacco and the Quit Campaign had gone nationwide.
These factors would have reinforced the drop in smoking, Mr Laugesen said.
The May tax increase was predicted to bring in an estimated $110 million in extra revenue.
But Mr Laugesen estimated that the Government would garner only an extra $6 million.
- NZPA
Cigarette sales 'hit by price increase'
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