29 August  2007. NZ SmokeLess e-News 2:9

Flat tax regime and cheap RYO smoking hold NZ back

Cheap RYO (roll-your-own) cigarette smoking in New Zealand is a likely explanation for the slower decline in smoking in New Zealand.

Today 23% of New Zealanders smoke daily, as compared to 17% of Australians. Smoking factory-made cigarettes in New Zealand costs $10 daily, but by switching to RYO cigarettes smokers cut their costs to $4 per day, so that there is little economic incentive to quit smoking.

The increased popularity of RYOs among New Zealand smokers is a main difference in smoking between Australia and New Zealand.

Australian and Canadian experts will speak at the Oceania Tobacco Control Conference at Auckland September 4-7. In the past 10 years, smoking among Australians has fallen twice as much as in New Zealanders, and in Canada , by three times as much. See www.endsmoking.org.nz/NZlagsinqutting07.htm

Only one in six Australian adults and one in seven Canadians and one in seven Swedes now smoke, as opposed to one in four to one in five New Zealand adults.

In New Zealand over the last 20 years RYOs had become  almost as popular as factory made cigarettes. 

Cheap RYOs are providing false comfort for over 300,000 smokers daily.

Dr Laugesen chair of SmokeLess New Zealand, analysed Ministry of Health survey records back to 1983, and found that RYO smokers nowadays use less tobacco, 5 g of tobacco per day on average, rolling ten cigarettes a day. In contrast, the average smoker of factory-made cigarettes smoked just under 20 cigarettes a day.

SmokeLess New Zealand says the current flat tax regime of 36c per gram across all tobaccos, makes matters worse not better.

It encourages smokers to switch to RYOs instead of quitting. Instead it wants the tobacco tax revised and re-designed to  encourage smokers to quit smoking altogether rather than switch to smoking RYOs. This anomaly needs urgent attention, Dr Laugesen said.

For more information, see www.endsmoking.org.nz/ryotax2.htm and www.smokeless.org.nz/AustraliavNZ.htm

Murray Laugesen

chair SmokeLess New Zealand.

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