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Snuff
on sale
As from today, 23 April, nasal snuff is being test marketed at
some 20 tobacconists, at $3.95 for 3.5 grams, with a menthol flavour. Estimating 0.1 g per two-finger pinch, one tin
will allow one pinch into each nostril for a total of about 17 times, and
thus replace an average smoker’s daily cigarettes.
Compared with cigarette smoking, the risk will be cut by 90 to
95%, and the dollar cost cut by 60 to 80%.
Nasal snuff, a brown powder
of finely ground tobacco, is the only known product on sale in New
Zealand that can equal smoking by
raising blood nicotine levels by 10 to 12 nanograms
per millilitre within ten minutes. It also
drastically reduces the urge to smoke within ten minutes.
The cans carry an
Australian type warning ‘This product can damage your
health.’ A
government-sponsored review has found that low-nitrosamine oral snuff is
much less risky than smoking, and does not cause cancer.1
Advertising, and sale to under-18s is banned, as for all
tobacco products.
For further information see www.endsmoking.org.nz/nasalsnuff.htm
and www.endsmoking.org.nz/nasalsnuff_analyses.htm
1 Broadstock M. Systematic review of the
health effects of modified tobacco products. http://nzhta.chmeds.ac.nz/publications/smokeless_tobacco.pdf (129pp)
The price of war
– editorial
As Anzac Day approaches, we remember the men and women who fought
in all the wars since the first Anzac Day, and the grave-strewn hills of
Gallipoli, which gave birth to the national identity of Australia, New Zealand and the modern Turkey.
The original Anzacs are gone now, but the boys born in that decade
later enlisted for World War 2, and again, cigarettes were issued to any
who wanted them. After the war, in 1947, smoking prevalence was at an all
time high in New Zealand men - probably 60%, according to the 1976
Census of those who had ever smoked.
No one knows this
better than Dr Newton Wickham, in the NZ Dental
Corps at the battle for Monte Cassino, 90 next
month, who plans to be on parade as usual with his mates at the Auckland
Domain this Wednesday. In dental practice in Auckland from 1947, Dr Wickham
could diagnose smokers from the changes it caused in the mouth, and
personally advised all his patients to quit.
Returned
servicemen didn’t speak much to their families about their
experiences. Many gave up smoking in the years that followed, but for
many the cigarette remained their solace, and the smokefree
bars legislation's effect on RSAs
understandably upset many of them.
Returning from war, they were not to know that if they gave up
smoking before they reached 40, they had an 80% chance of reaching their
80th birthday, and that if they did not, their chances were
only 40%, based on the death rates in British doctors of the same vintage
followed for these past 50 years by the late Sir Richard Doll.
This generation of soldiers had lost fathers or uncles in World
War 1, their mates in World War 2. They had won the peace, but
memories of war troubled them, and a lifetime of
cigarette smoking unduly aged or prematurely killed many of them. They
suffered double jeopardy – caught in a war not of their making, and
addicted to cigarettes they did not know were killers.
Since World War 2, nearly 200,000 New Zealanders have died early
due to smoking cigarettes. Preventing war requires two parties in
agreement, but the sale of cigarettes in New Zealand does not require the permission of the tobacco
industry. It requires us to seek the support of the people of New Zealand and Members of Parliament, most of whom are
non-smokers. This support will be more readily given, if effective
alternative products are on sale to satisfy smokers’ needs for
nicotine.
NZ lags in
quitting
NZ lagging behind
other countries in reducing smoking
Summary: Smoking prevalence is higher in NZ than in five
comparable countries and is reducing more slowly. In New Zealand, although the quitline
provides subsidized nicotine, smokeless alternatives to smoking were not
on sale and RYO cigarettes cost only $4 a day.
For the graphs and full explanation, see www.endsmoking.org.nz/NZlagsinquitting07.htm
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