Plain cigarette packaging has hit the shelves, and to cap off a busy week for fags the Government has announced another of its now-famous reviews into the tobacco tax.
The plain packaging, at least, is part of our ongoing war on tobacco. The theory is, the branding that tobacco warriors argue is all part of the so-called glamour of smoking, is stubbed out.
You have your horrific diseased lung pictures in their place, and we make the whole experience less and less palatable. The ultimate goal is to be smokefree by 2025 - and here's the problem: we are running out of time.
Not just that, we've hit a wall. And part of the reason we have not been more effective in this fight is driven by hypocrisy. The hypocrisy is the government earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year in tax from fag sales, and they're loath to give it up.
The approach to become smokefree was well-intentioned and altruistic as so many of these things are. Helen Clark sort of championed the whole thing - but the real hero in my book was Tariana Turia, the former Maori Party co-leader, when she was in government. And this is another one of those political sadnesses around MMP and its fickle nature.