Health experts say axing plan to block sales of tobacco products to next generation will cost thousands of lives
Why benefit society when you can just fuck it over whilst profiting from short term gains.
God I hate how this planet functions. Tax the fucking rich already.
Taxxing won’t do anything because structurally the Rich have the most power in the system. The only way to fix this is to systematically remove the Rich through whatever means and remove the means which enables them to exist.
Planet? Don’t include the mice and dolphins in the way the homo sapiens do their shit.
Dolphins can be dicks sometimes too lol
Plus have you ever seen them go through a pack of ciggies? Fuckin chimney-faced bastards so they are. REEKING of fags. Horrid creatures.
And when the planet is about to go tits up they’re just going to “thank us for all the fish” and say “so long” as they disappear into a different dimension. Truly selfish
Boomers are having a temper tantrum in their death throes by elections these Conservatives.
extinction burst
There is a massive drive to legalize weed. How is banning this any different than banning marijuana?
Do not like smoking myself but not sure how to justify the hypocrisy of thinking we should ban this vice over the other.
i dont think anybody is being forced to go buy cigarettes
Makes you wonder how much lobbying Big Tobacco did.
They just had an election and the government flipped from centre-left to centre-right. It could just be the classic conservative “our position is whatever is the opposite of the left!”
Winston Peters (NZ First leader) is a total alcohol, tobacco, and racing (horse, greyhound, whatever) industry shill. I doubt he exactly needed to be bought, but this is certainly part of his price for being part of the coalition government.
ACT (secular libertarian free market folk) probably mildly supported it, and National (general centre right; largest party) is probably much the same.
No I blame Seymour for this. Luxon went for it because Winston cock blocked him on foriegn ownership and he needs to fund those tax cuts.
Big tobacco doesn’t really need cigarette sales anymore. They are all in on vape brands, where they can sell the liquid at ink-jet prices to customers for a huge markup at $6500 per liter. That’s why you see vape shops on each street corner. The distribution is all streamlined. The website talks to the DHL warehouse about what stock is available, customers can subscribe to weekly delivery plans and the warehouse is filled by some factory in china.
I believe the ban affected vape products as well.
Just out of curiousity have you ever seen liquid sold at $65/10ml? I usually pay 50-100x less than that
Hard to say because they are very sneaky. We do know that Big tobacco ran a fake grassroots campaign with an imaginary dairy owner front man. (“Dairy” is the New Zealand name for corner shops/ drugstores)
Tagging you @AnAngryAlpaca - they may not need it but their greed didn’t get the memo.
Their campaign strategist was an “ex” tobacco lobbyist
Lol sounds like this increases tax revenues by increasing the number of addicted smokers buying cigarettes and then taxing the sales.
Really sound government policy there.
They have actually admitted this is going to be revenue gathering. NZ has some of the highest tobacco tax in the world.
Basically their election promise was tax cuts, which they intended to do by allowing more foriegn ownership of real estate and taxing it.
After the election they found out they could only govern with the help of a populist party and a libertarian party.
The populists won’t allow more foriegn ownership of real estate. Meanwhile the libertarians’ wet dream is stuff like more
lung cancertobacco.So we get shitty last minute law changes we didn’t see coming, like this one.
Wait, they want more foreign ownership of real estate?? Are they high lol. That’s going to price out every last young person there from homes that’s not already priced out.
Yeah it was straight up one of their biggest election promises.
What can I say, their core base is landlords, boomers, and people who want leopards to eat faces.
They are supported by boomers and farmers both of which own property and are happy to flog it off to the highest bidder. They don’t care a jot for the rest of society not having a place to live
The populists won’t allow more foriegn ownership of real estate.
I don’t see a single problem here. Fuck, I wish Australia would get behind this.
Also good, fuck prohibition laws. Leave them in the fucking past where they belong. If I want to slowly kill myself by inhaling burning plant matter, then that’s my decision. The taxes I pay more than cover my eventual cost to the state’s healthcare system. The government does not get to dictate what I do with my own body.
Actually, a LOT of studies do show that no, in most countries, taxes are far from enough to cover the cost of tobacco induced diseases.
They are from Australia. The taxes on one single packet of cigarettes could fund the construction of a new hospital.
NZ taxes are higher and it doesn’t cover the costs here, either
It doesn’t thou. The cost of smoking to the state is fucking massive
Everyone could see that the foriegn buyers tax wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t going to raise enough revenue and was also illegal. It was obvious that something was going to get cut to pay for taxes. It’s not like this wasn’t pointed out ad nauseum during the election
It’s worse than that as it’s short term tax gains now but increased public health spending later from those same taxes when they start getting cancer in a decade or two.
But lower pension costs, and overall it saves money to allow people to smoke themselves to an early death. Even if you count the cost of their treatment, it’s cheaper than 20 extra years of pension payments. It’s a terrifying but sound economic policy.
Using the UK numbers, around 80k people die of smoking per year, costing the NHS alone £2.6bn, their full state pension cost is around £900m, so there is a sizeable gap between just the NHS cost and the amount on their pension as the pension saving has to be significantly more than the remaining years on their state pension as there is another set of costs next year, and the year after and so on… Total cost per year is estimates at about £12bn, but direct government cost is a bit over £4bn. This doesn’t include the fact that it ties up beds for other people who do not smoke, which means worse outcomes fro them, and this has knock on costs.
They just aren’t killing them fast enough.
When you elect the clowns of conservative/neoliberal politics, you get what you deserve — a circus.
When you elect the clowns of conservative/neoliberal politics,
you geteveryone gets what you deserve
Tax revenue that you’ll have to plow right back into the health care system to treat expensive lung cancers. But hey, that’s only 20 years down the line, so you look good now.
I’m not sure about how accurate it is, but I read something a while back about it being the opposite in canada. You don’t spend more on smokers because they don’t live long enough to get to the really expensive part.
This is just a foggy memory so I’m definitely open to being corrected.
Yup. It’s really effective. I’ve paid my share of lung ruining tax in my lifetime. And for most of that time I’d be happy to defend my right to soil my airways to something close to the death.
I’ve been clean for over a year. But that addiction is so fucking emotional that you let them squeeze you dry and you almost applaud it. The perfect capitalist drug.
Glad you’ve put up the fight and made it through the other side.
Cheers mate
Yes but actually most western governments do this. The Aus health minister made a comment to the same effect a couple of months back. The US even collateralises loans using payments from tobacco companies that have not yet been made, as compensation for harm to public health that has not yet been done.
Call JG Wentworth 877 Cash Now!
New Zealand is scrapping a whole lot of things right now.
10 years worth of environmental protection laws is another thing being scrapped.
Smoking is awful, disgusting, and through the diseases it causes puts a massive burden on the healthcare system… buuuut, educational campaigns to encourage people to stop and limiting it in media/banning advertisements is definitely the way to go over yet another prohibition law.
“yet another prohibition”
another American projecting their domestic nonsense onto the rest of the world
Most drugs are prohibited in most countries, throughout most of history.
You’re thinking specifically of American alcohol prohibition in the 1920s. It is you who is projecting americanism.
I think governments should always ban everything they don’t like. Next up: alcohol, candy and snacks. Then maybe bars, motor sports and sex for unmarried people.
educational campaigns to encourage people to stop and limiting it in media/banning advertisements is definitely the way to go
I don’t really understand why you think New Zealand hasn’t already done that. It banned all tobacco advertising decades ago. Including shops have to keep them out of sight and no signs.
Starting from the 1990s tobacco had to have gruesome pictures of diseased lungs, rotting diabetic toes, etc all over it, and health warnings.
Then they banned companies from using their own fonts, colours or logos and standardised it. Then they made the warnings take up all the pack.
Modern tobacco packs in New Zealand look like this and costs two hours’ wages for just one packet.
There are gruesome PSAs about it as well.
Unfortunately it’s highly addictive and it kills people.
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Education means doing nothing. It literally is the status quo which we know does not work.
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But, but… Tax cuts for the rich!? 😢
I think it’s more that pro-smoking plays better with their right wing voter base than taxes. That and the fact that ciggies can still be bought, so the younger generation will still be able to get them. I mean, it being illegal has never stopped any drug. The best way to get rid of smoking is just to ramp up the tax and wait for everyone to take up something cheaper. Even the most hardened smoker at my work now vape instead. Not amazing for you, but got to be better than inhaling all the crap in cigarettes.
Only the mega rich have a solid reason for caring about tax cuts. Everybody else should be clamouring for better services, as that is what will really be cut to give those billionaires more money to hoard.
I’ve always supported this approach too but I have to wonder… is there a point where it gets taxed so high that people will just go back to the black market? What would prevent anyone from going black (heh) if it’s cheaper than the legal option?
There’s already plenty of black market ciggies in both NZ and AU. Just watch one of the border patrol shows and every second person they catch is a suitcase full of cigarettes.
The black market in australia is huge. Almost everyone i see smoking at work or at pubs is smoking black market cigarettes or using illegal vapes. If they crack down on the black market i expect to see a large rise in robberies of shops selling cigarettes. The taxes have gone too far. This is also why they won’t ban smoking. Billions in tax revenue.
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What the mega rich want is a big return on their tobacco company investments.
The thing I find hilarious is that a few weeks ago, when there was talk of the UK doing the same sort of thing, everyone was pointing to this legislation as an example of how it has worked elsewhere.
It didn’t even last a year! All it’s done is slightly annoyed a handful of teenagers for a few months.
Funny enough, it was a conservative government pushing it too.
It’s not that crazy, considering it won’t affect older people. Old Tories can continue to smoke while the young can’t, it’s basically the Tory way.
Considering that nicotine isn’t the harmful part of smoking, the amendment they had about greatly reducing how huch nicotine a cigarette was allowed to have would have been a pretty stupid move, turning people into chain smokers.
People aren’t literally addicted to the habit of smoking, they’re physically addicted to nicotine. It’s pretty much unavoidable. Any smoker who tells you they just like the ritual, has been conditioned to think that by mentally associating the ritual with relief from the physical symptoms of nicotine withdrawal.
Sure, removing the nicotine isn’t going to be an immediate barrier from continuing smoking. But the point is that once the person can no longer get nicotine from smoking, they will almost certainly make the decision to quit themselves. And that has the potential to be a more profound decision for them than simply having the product taken off the shelves and being told they can’t have it.
They aren’t removing all the nicotine. They were just cutting down how much each cigarette has. So for a smoker to get their nicotine fix, they’d have to smoke three times as many cigarettes.
It’s still tobacco at the end of the day, you can’t remove all of the nicotine because it occurs naturally. It occurs in many other plants too, but in levels which doesn’t inspire any motivation to remove it. In the same way I think delineating between elimination and reduction of nicotine is a moot point. Smoking is not pleasant, and every smoker has overcome this unpleasantness to become nicotine addicts. There is no reason other than nicotine why it continues to propagate in all countries and cultures today. And with nicotine-reduced cigarettes, smokers must simultaneously engage with that unpleasantness more, and still come to terms with diminished returns vs. the nicotine they previously ingested from 1 cigarette.
As for the amount the nicotine can be reduced by, I’ve seen a wide range of estimates from 50% to 90+%. I don’t think we’ll ever really know what’s reasonable and scalable without any such product actually on the market.
If the idea is reducing it to the point where smokers don’t think it’s worth it to smoke anymore, then just ban them. Otherwise you absolutely will have people who will smoke 3-4x more to get their original fix. Or they’ll take deeper draws and hold it longer like people did when lights were introduced (there were studies on this)
Without taking away from your point, I’ll point out that you’re comparing hypothetical isolated cases of pointless and fruitless self-harm to a supposed reduction in tobacco harm generally, which is one of the leading causes of premature death globally, and is also fully preventable (while the actions of irrational persons is not generally preventable). I think the side you land on has more to do with one’s politics generally than the actual issue. Does “do no harm” take priority if the consequence is “generally more death”?
No I literally think they should ban them instead of playing stupid games like taking most of the nicotine out and hoping people make the healthier decision vs the more destructive one of smoking more.
Whether nicotine reduction would even lead to a net reduction in harm is the actual hypothetical here, and there are reasons to believe it wouldn’t, which is all I’m pointing out. It just sounds like a shitty policy, regardless of ideology.
What are those reasons? It sounds like you’re trying to say that tobacco as a cultivated plant for smoking propagating across the world over the past few centuries is because it was trendy.
Without getting into my personal involvement and anecdotes, ‘introduce RNT products and hope for the best’ is far from an accurate characterisation of NZ Labour’s Smokefree 2025 Action Plan.
No reason other than nicotine
It’s not just nicotine though. Effects of MAO inhibition and a combination of minor alkaloids, β-carbolines, and acetaldehyde on nicotine self-administration…
We don’t know the full role Tobacco specific Nitrosamines and other alkaloids play, but it’s there.
It reinforces the effect of the nicotine. That’s literally why tobacco companies were adding acetone to cigarettes back when they were publicly denying it was even addictive.
Equal to more tax money. Sadly…
GILA! GILA!
Nicotine is addictive and harmful to your health. It restricts blood to the brain, narrows arteries, and causes blood clots. https://www.echelon.health/nicotine-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ there are benefits to nicotine too but they don’t it as a prescription drug because of the drawbacks.
I’m surprised Lemmy has this take. Why is it anyone else’s right to take your right to smoking away?
I don’t mind taking away the right for my son to smoke cancer sticks. Much like I wouldn’t mind making Russian roulette illegal.
I don’t like it when anyone threatens my son at all.
Perhaps it’s not the right to harm ones self that’s the issue. Should you have the right to manufacture, sell, and profit from harm to others? Be it environmental, oral health, lung health, or heart health, cigarettes are a net negative to any citizenry. Seems in a governments best interest to try and greatly reduce and/or eliminate this leech.
I’m sure you’re fighting against marijuana legalization then to improve public health too.
Unlike cigarettes, cannabis has medical uses and is not nearly as harmful especially if you don’t smoke it (vaping or edibles). It’s not completely safe (hardly any drug is) but it’s on a different level of safe compared to tobacco.
Why is it anyone else’s right to take your right to smoking away?
I have to breathe your smoke and pay for your healthcare.
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Seems like a good thing to me. Let people decide for themselves, it’s not the government’s job to tell them what they can and can’t put in their body.
It literally is the government’s job. That’s the whole point of the FDA.
I think they’re making a statement about the proper role of goverment, not what it currently does.
And in NZ it’s the Ministry of Health.
FDA’s job is to tell corporations what they can and can’t put in your body. You’re still welcome to seek out those poisons and consume them. Cigarettes should be no different.
Agree with this. All the pro weed and pro other drug people need to realize they are making the opposite argument to support banning smoking. All substances carry some intrinsic risk and the externalities must be managed, but its up to consenting adults to make their own choices about what they will consume.
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To maintain infrastructure.
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Yes, paid for by the exorbitant taxes on cigarettes.
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I think you missed something. Banning cigarettes takes money away from healthcare, it doesn’t put more into it.
Smokers wind up paying almost 10x what they cost the system over their lives. Banning that income will only make things worse.
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It was a cowardly way to enact a law.
What exactly do you mean by this?
Ban smoking if you’re going to ban it. If it’s unhealthy and stupid (it is) then don’t just do it for the non-voters. Take a stand.
The leading Māori public health organisation, Hāpai te Hauora, said the reversal will be “catastrophic for Māori communities”.
It’s not a good idea to tell conservatives how policies would potentially harm the vulnerable, the poor, the excluded.
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Why don’t they tell the Maori to not smoke?
There have been more than 10 years of targetted ads telling Maori not to smoke, appealing to specifically Maori concepts like whanau and manaaakitanga.
What the people in this thread don’t realise is that this law was part of Smokefree Aotearoa, an initiative invented by The Maori Party (a party whose main voters are Maori) to gradually phase out smoking.
It wasn’t an abrupt change.
And drug addicts not to do drugs. Good idea
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Why would words help?
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believe it or not, the only people who actually talk like that are a few dozen deranged neckbeards on lemmy. noone in the real world acts like that
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One in six New Zealanders are Maori.
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New Zealand electoral system is MMP
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The Maori seats are sometimes pivotal. There is also a political party called The Maori Party which has sometimes been in government.
For these reasons it’s important to tell the voters at large when a policy affects this particular constituency.
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LOL. This is funny AF.
This article uncovers an awful cancer of the platform: There are way too many who buy any conservative narrative if you frame it as freedom.
In Washington State, it’s recently illegal to sell tobacco to anyone under 21. Placing it on the same level as alcohol or weed.
Shit really? I somehow completely missed this one when did this happen?
It was 2020. It’s honestly been interesting to see. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31348515/ is a study from before 2020 stating that 4% less of 18-20 year olds smoked when the age limit is increased to 21. I couldn’t find any specifics on Washington state though.
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