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Op-Ed: New Zealand ‘smoke-free generation’ legislation draws praise and flak

The “smoke-free generation” is arguably the most drastic anti-tobacco legislation in the world.

© Denis Charlet, AFP
© Denis Charlet, AFP

New Zealand has come up with the idea that nobody aged 14 or under will ever be able to buy tobacco. The “smoke-free generation” is arguably the most drastic anti-tobacco legislation in the world. The goal is to reduce smoking rates to 5% of the population by 2025. The legislation will evolve to restrict and eventually remove licensed sales of tobacco.

Not everyone believes in it, though, for a wide range of reasons. The 2025 goal is under fire already, RNZ News cites one expert pointing out that 40,000 people per year would have to quit to achieve the objective.

More bluntly, and far less statistically verifiable, is the obvious issue that banning smoking will fuel an already-growing black market. A prohibition-like environment would involve a lot of expensive enforcement, and like marijuana, that usually just doesn’t work at all.

There’s a good example of that right next door to New Zealand. In Australia.  The anti-smoking campaign, like Prohibition, has been a big financial gift for organized crime. Black market tobacco is extremely easy to get, and has been for decades. Huge price increases have pushed up the price of a packet of smokes up to nearly $50; the black market is booming. There were 300,000 seizures of illegal tobacco by the Border Force last year. The quantity of tobacco is truly enormous; 240 tons of tobacco were destroyed in August of this year alone, for example.

Statistics vs reality, guess who’s winning.

 The very high black market sales also call into question all the official statistics. The estimate is the black market alone consumes 5 billion dollars’ worth of tobacco per year, not including licensed sales. The Quit campaign may be kidding itself, from these numbers.

How do these huge figures equate to the national estimate of a population of 11.2% of adult Australian smokers, or about 2.5 million people? It’s more than likely the official stats are horrifically out of whack with the real market.

It’s far too early to tell how the New Zealand initiative will work. The risks are obvious, the returns are debatable.

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Written By

Editor-at-Large based in Sydney, Australia.

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