Tobacco tax, smokefree target on the table in review
Nothing is being ruled in or out in a review of tobacco taxes, including reducing excise and pushing out the Smokefree 2025 target, Associate Health Minister Jenny Salesa says.“In terms of whether or not we will continue the tax or not will be a decision that Cabinet will have to make in around November,” Salesa said today.
“I’m not ruling in or ruling out anything. All I’m saying is that in November Cabinet will have a decision on excise tax.”
A review of the impact of tobacco tax, commissioned by the Ministry of Health, is looking at the financial impact on smokers, their families, illicit trade and crime. It is due to be completed by November.
Tobacco went up again on the 1st of the year meaning the working classes, the poor and beneficiaries who use nicotine as an addictive crutch to self medicate the grim precariousness of their economic existence were all made far more stressed out and bitter cold turkeys, sinking more of the little disposable income they do have into their personal fix and coping mechanism.
Neato.
I don’t smoke cigarettes, it’s never been my bag and I despise any industry who sells addictive death with impunity, but I can taste counter productive social policy when I smell it and the current fanatical crusade against smokers is looking increasingly flawed.
Consistently hitting up users for more money means working class users are punished while Tobacco starts becoming a status symbol for wealth by the hip rich kids who can afford it.
By banning tobacco in prison (not for the prisoners health mind you, but because double bunked prisoners could successfully sue the Government for second hand smoke) and by increasing the price so dramatically, this anti-tobacco crusade has created the perfect storm for a black market, the friction point of which is exploding every week in Dairy’s across the country that are being violently attacked and targeted for tobacco.
By increasing the cost to the individual, we build up the pressure of addiction that fuels an unregulated black market while the industry walks away laughing all the way to the bank.
There are better ways to gain our goal of smoke free than this punitive and counter productive zealotry.
Rather than punish the user, go after the bloody industry. Consistently raising the price so the end user is forced to get more and more desperate to feed their addiction is not a solution. Create a vice tax that goes on the profit margin of the tobacco company. Put the pressure on the corporation to pay more of their profits rather than endlessly punish the end user.
On top of that, it is time for the mass subsidisation of vape so that smokers have a far less lethal and cheaper itch. The lack of second hand smoke damage means it could also be used in prisons and other places where health concerns prevent smoking.
Reducing cost as dramatically as vape does and allowing it inside prisons would empty the demand for a black market overnight.
We could do far more to end tobacco by punishing the corporations and supporting the smokers rather than endlessly punishing the smoker and allowing the corporations off the hook for their toxic poison.
Unfortunately it seems the zealots who run the anti-tobacco movement are only focused on going after the addict and not the dealer.
Well said bomber .
RNZ this morning identified 2 billion in tax revenue from NZ tobacco sales with a tiny 3% spent directly on quit smoking programs.
Does the Govt really want to reduce smoking when the tax take is so good ? Forgive the cynic in me but is this a case of yes Minister , “Lets solve the problem , but lets not solve it too quickly ”
The free vape idea for certified smokers seems a winner as long as it doesn’t affect the revenue stream , which if successful , it certainly would .Oh dear ….
Hitting the corporations gets my support , just as well there has been a carve out on tobacco under the TPPA ,otherwise the tobacco industry would be untouchable .But does the Govt have the balls to do it . …I doubt it , the money go round is just too good .Sounds like a good sketch for Jono and Ben.
I can still remember Pita Sharples boasting about Getting the tax on tobacco raised as one of the achievements of his party, and justification for sucking up to the Corporate raiders party (national)…
The news media at the time were happy to let him bask in his “success” as a governing party…
I suppose they got what they deserved really.. Thrown as far from power as possible by the very electorate they attacked, when pretending to champion… Of all of them, i had respect for Hone Harawera… No surprises he got dudded by his own party, and the neo liberals dominant within the labour party at the time…
When I was a truck driver, way back in the day, as they say, I used to drive a 40 ton truck GLW and trailer unit back and forth from Lyttelton Harbour to where ever the freight needed to be.
My employer received a complaint about me. I was seen driving my Merc and a forty foot flat deck with two twenty footers on it while smoking with one hand and holding a cup of coffee in the other. The complainant pondered, that if I had a fag in one hand and a coffee in the other… how was I steering the truck. ( No. Not with my diddle.) My knees, of course. Who can’t steer a vehicle with their knees when required? Soon to be dead people I guess.
I no longer smoke. I’d love to, but I’m too old now to get away with it and I don’t want to put what few good years I have left at peril. When I hit 90, however, I’m not going to give a fuck and have every intention of buying a lovely soft pack of Marlborough’s and another zippo. I want to be that nasty, dirty, smelly, foul mouthed old fucker in the ‘rest home’ that no one went near except for his dealer.
Look. We’re humans. Not chickens. We’re human beings and we got here, God help us, by being just that little bit crazy. Smoking is crazy but by God it’s cool and lovely and everything. Sure, it’ll also kill you but before that, it’ll make you feel like shit and you’ll stink like a weasel’s ball bag but c’mon… James Dean without a cigarette? Died in a car crash.
The things is, smokers get sick more often than not from their pastime. But so what?
All you non smokers will be moaning “ Why should I pay taxes to pay for medical care to smokers sick from their filthy habit?”
I can tell you why. Because you too, are human beings and the last time I looked, we’re all in this together and one of the vital signs of being an empathetic and human, human is the way we pitch in to keep each other physically and emotionally safe. Of course, that ethos fell apart when neo liberalism came to a festering head. Suddenly, we were all ‘ individuals’ and ‘free’ etc wank etc. Free to be persecuted and harvested by banksters and sundry other polite criminals more like.
People should be able to smoke. To smoke what ever the fuck they like. Take any drug they want. So long as they don’t harm innocent others. Like when a Dairy owner gets the bash for his fags because a pack of 30 gm tobacco now costs more than $50.00.
But the right wing ‘ freedom freaks’ will have us ignore the many millionaires here who made their money from their selling off of our assets and amenities. For which we pay through the nose for to this day.
I say, drink, smoke, ping, pop so long as you’re happy.
Classic CB!
Love to read your posts.
You’re very kind. xxx
Agree, Country Boy. One of my quitting attempts had a recommended strategy of carrying a little jar of wet butts around to sniff regularly as aversion therapy.
Carried them around, unscrewed the top regularly, sniffed, and thought, ‘Beautiful.’
Quit Line quietly privatised a couple of years ago has gone downhill.
Tariana Turia pushed the anti-smoking campaign because so many of her dead whanau were smokers, but they were all going to die anyway.
Likely also part of an anti rich-white-man campaign too – the tobacco company executives are very bad people.
The govt take on tobacco products more than funds smokers’ health costs, but if they are concerned about our aging population burden, then perhaps they could hand out free smokes to every citizen above a certain age who wants them.
@ Christine. So are you xxx
Try this, if you’re trying to quit the fags. ( Back off Gay men. No disrespect xxx )
Big old pot leaves. The big ones that have virtually no dreaded psychoactive effect. Can’t be having a fit of the double-happy’s now can we, little Right Wings?
Double Happy’s.
https://youtu.be/OLNyojltncw
They, those big ol’ shade leaves, don’t get you stoned, but they do feel like your having a fag. You’ll know what I mean. x Not on-going addictive though! I know! Amazing!
After a while, you go ” D’you know what? Fuck it! Fuck the fags ( xxx ) ” Thus? Job done.
Police? Thirty years ago so…
I have a story about how my old Aunt ( Deceased ) literally nailed her mattress to her bedroom wall to stop her, and it, falling to the floor, with galvanised nails. Of an air bed going flat. Of me needing to shit immediately. Of my aunt ( dead ) stitching comfy rags to her toilet seat because, cold old bum, of me getting scissors to cut them horrible rags away, of me getting an asthma attack and nearly dying… they were compelling reasons for quitting cigarettes. Try almost dying of asthma? Breathing seemed like a better alternative at the time, but who knows, right? What’s after the Light At The End Of The Tunnel?? If it’s paula bennett married to Jonk-E? I’ll reincarnate thanks.
Yes o all of the above and I have never smoked, burst into flames a few times but never smoked.
When National supported a policy to increase excise tax on cigarettes and to have the effect of stopping smokers smoke, they solely became responsible for the increase of vicious attacks on dairy owners we sess today. I doubt any would disagree with that.
I note that Finance Minister Grant Robertson said on a stuff news feed yesterday that he believed that the method of cutting smoking by price increases had probably come to the end of its useful life. It had been effective in cutting existing use and discouraging new users but now another method needed to be employed to lower it further.
Simply increasing the tax on tobacco every year or so really just makes it into brown gold. When unprotected dairy owners sell brown gold they are a target for armed robberies. My wife works at a dairy that sells tobacco and thus far she has not been targeted but I can’t help the feeling that it may happen one day.
We probably all agree that smoking is dangerous and it would be good if it didn’t happen, but new strategies are needed to do this and it is good that members of the government are prepared to consider it.
… ‘ Create a vice tax that goes on the profit margin of the tobacco company. Put the pressure on the corporation to pay more of their profits rather than endlessly punish the end user.
On top of that, it is time for the mass subsidisation of vape so that smokers have a far less lethal and cheaper itch. The lack of second hand smoke damage means it could also be used in prisons and other places where health concerns prevent smoking.
Reducing cost as dramatically as vape does and allowing it inside prisons would empty the demand for a black market overnight ‘ …
——————————-
^^^^
THIS.
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