Editorial: Should we rethink tobacco strategy?

Simon Waters

IT'S bad for your health, costs a packet (pun intended), is socially unpleasant, and your clothes smell manky.

And yet about 15 per cent of adult New Zealanders choose to smoke each day - that's about 550,000 people, and the rate increases to 35 per cent for Maori, and 22 per cent for Pacific people.

The Government wants a smoke-free New Zealand by 2025 ... just how that will work is anyone's guess. Will tourists be exempt, for example - if not, what impact will a smoke-free law have on visitor numbers?

Bill English says he will continue to hike tobacco taxes every year until 2020 - a pack of 20 cigarettes increasing to around $30, a crippling sum for those on a packet-a-day habit.

New Zealand is already the most expensive country in the world to be a smoker, and tobacco is a cash cow that brings in far more revenue than it costs in smoking-related healthcare.

Despite extreme taxes and lofty ideals, we have the news that $1.7 million spent in Whanganui on campaigns to stub out the habit has left us with more smokers than we had three years ago when the campaigns began.

People smoke for all sorts of reasons - it can help melt away the stresses of the day; provide solace in times of hardship. It is the crutch by which many keep going.

Little wonder then that smokers are an innovative bunch when it comes to ignoring the campaigns and subverting the taxes. Some grow their own tobacco - perfectly legal - while others turn to the black market - stocked, no doubt, from the escalating number of dairy robberies.

People will always find ways to endure the pain of remaining a smoker. And that's their right.

Meantime, those most affected by some of the harshest taxes in the world are those who can least afford them. Exorbitant taxes bludgeoning people to give up clearly are not working and are, frankly, inhumane.

Perhaps it is time to rethink this country's obssession with tobacco.