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In relation to Minister of
Health and Government:
We need fresh policies –
to obtain better health
gains from the government’s increased investment in this sector –
now over $30 million a year. Progress is simply not fast enough.
Adoption of new policies The last radical tobacco policy upgrade was
in 1990.
End Smoking NZ’s policies can increase the options and
suggest new directions, because at any time, any private member of
parliament could win the ballot, requiring decisions from government as
to whether a private member’s bill should be sent to Health Select
Committee, where all stakeholders can have their say.
Governmental
revenue of a billion plus
from cigarette taxes may decline gradually in future years, as smokers
finally switch away from cigarettes. These are transfer payments, and
while excise revenue may decline, the total tax base will actually
increase, as $ 1.5 billion no longer goes up in smoke. www.eastonbh.ac.nz/article59.html
End Smoking NZ asks Government to
1) review how to further strengthen its programme and national
tobacco control policy, and
2) take decisive action to reduce
smoking prevalence to near zero by 2020. End Smoking NZ offers its
assistance.
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Review by
Parliament’s Health Select Committee
End Smoking NZ respects the expertise Health Select Committee
members acquire in the course of their work, and the key role they can
play in developing consensus on achieving further progress on
controversial issues.
In view of the slow
progress in reducing smoking prevalence, and the need, in our view, to
widen policies used:
End Smoking NZ asks Parliament’s Health Select Committee,
for a Review of national tobacco control policy, to decide on the
policies and law changes required to achieve near zero-smoking prevalence
by 2016.
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Political parties
Parliamentarians
generally wish to protect young people from smoking, but the ban since
1986 on sale to under 18s has not stopped young
people buying cigarettes. More radical action is needed to protect the
next generation.
Political
parties vary greatly in their support for more effective law. Labour, the
Greens and Maori Party supplemented by conscience voters from other parties, could provide a majority vote for legislative
action.
End Smoking NZ wishes to work cooperatively
with all political parties willing to support faster reduction of
smoking.
Maori Party. Hone Harawira MP said (22
February 2006 NZ
Herald) smoking should be banned without penalizing smokers, and that the
Maori Party would back his private member’s bill to that effect.
End Smoking NZ
supports a ban on the sale of cigarettes as a longer term goal, as soon
as smoking prevalence has further decreased. In preparation for a ban on the sale of
cigarettes, the important issue is to provide safe alternatives for
smokers who are unable to quit. So far, the emphasis of tobacco control
policies has been on legislating for advertising bans and smokefree
environments. What is now required is to provide much greater help for
smokers.
End Smoking NZ supports
policies to provide much greater help for smokers: www.endsmoking.org.nz/objectives.htm
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Smokers
656,000 adults in the 2006 Census had not quit smoking. About
half a million of these are addicted smokers.
Over 80% of smokers
polled say they regret taking up smoking. Nearly 400,000 smokers over the
age of 35 face a fifty-fifty chance of dying early from their smoking.
The options of these smokers could be widened. www.endsmoking.org.nz/smokersoptions.htm
End Smoking NZ supports more nicotine choices
for smokers, and increased public awareness of the choices. More choice
means more addicted smokers can quit smoking, and start enjoying better
health, while still enjoying their nicotine.
Once cigarette sales are phased out, End
Smoking NZ supports personal liberty of smokers to grow for personal use,
possess, carry and smoke cigarettes, but does not support sale or supply
to anyone else. _____________________________________________________________________________________
The nicotine
trade - cigarette retailers
The 7000+ retailers
who sell cigarettes and smoking tobacco are in the business of selling
addictive nicotine. Many smokers call in daily for their fix, and buy
other items also. The nicotine is 99% sold as cigarettes, whereas in Sweden 45% of the nicotine sold is snuff. If the
tax on snuff was lowered, its sale would provide retail margins which
would compensate for any loss of the cigarette trade.
End Smoking NZ has no
financial relationship with the nicotine trade (either tobacco or
pharmaceutical).
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Nonsmokers
Most nonsmokers
(77% of adults) have smokefree homes and wish to protect their children
or grandchildren from becoming smokers. This risk remains until cigarette
sales to adults are phased out.
End Smoking NZ believes the
nonsmoking majority want the cigarette trade shut down, as soon as this
becomes feasible.
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The
pharmaceutical and nicotine industry
Pharmaceutical companies have
brought several effective
stop-smoking drugs on to the New Zealand market in the last few years. These drugs
will require a medical prescription; but relapse due to cravings to smoke
in the first year after quitting is likely to remain a problem.
Nicotine Gum. Recent pharmaceutical formulations provide
more palatable nicotine gum. Nicotine for long term use is a potential
market.
New fast acting nicotine products
have been researched in NZ, and brought to market in Sweden by NicoNovum, a
small Swedish company, but NZ has not benefited. Pure nicotine is safer
and therefore preferable, but to reduce population harm, alternatives
have to become popular.
End Smoking NZ has no financial relationship
with the pharmaceutical or nicotine industry.
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The cigarette
industry
Its products. Cigarettes have killed some 200,000 New
Zealanders since 1950. (Peto, www.ctsu.ox.ac.uk )
Its record. The tobacco industry suffers from low
credibility in the eyes of the NZ public, not just because their products
kill people, but because they knew this to be so from their own
scientists. They did not just keep quiet about the risks of cigarettes, they repeatedly denied that cigarettes
caused lung cancer. They failed to warn customers, the media and the New
Zealand Government:
What cigarette manufacturers knew, when they
knew it, and what they told their customers
- 1963.
Addiction. In 1963
British American Tobacco knew addictive nicotine was addictive, but
kept this information from the US Surgeon General’s Advisory
Committee on Smoking and Health (The
Cigarette Papers (University of California Press 1996 p.74) based on internal company
documents www.tobaccodocuments.org
).
- 1964.
Lung cancer. The US
Surgeon General stated that smoking caused lung cancer.
- 1968. Janice Pou
started smoking at age 17 in Invercargill. David Collins QC appearing
for the estate of Janice Pou in the High
Court in Auckland in February 2006, said British American Tobacco
lawyers conceded in this case that BAT cigarettes caused the lung
cancer that killed Janice Pou at the age
of 52.
- 1974: Rothmans and Wills placed weak
small-font Department of Health warnings on cigarette packets, but
in 1975 in a television programme they publicly disagreed with the
warning.
- 1986. Rothmans and Wills opposed Department
of Health’s proposed warning, Smoking is addictive and kills.
Cigarette industry’s
current positions Cigarette manufacturing companies sell about 99% of the nicotine
sold in New Zealand, absorbed along with toxic smoke gases and
tar. Cigarette companies seem unlikely to support a law change to permit
import of oral smokeless tobacco (snus) for sale soon, as this would
threaten their cigarette nicotine monopoly, worth nearly $0.5 billion a
year in company revenue. This could change if government were going to
lift the sales ban on oral tobacco in any case.
End Smoking NZ has no
financial relationship with the cigarette and tobacco industry.
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The Smokeless tobacco
industry
Swedish Match is the leading producer of Swedish moist snuff
(snus) worldwide, which is low (ppm) in
carcinogenic nitrosamines, conforming to their own industry (GothiaTek) standard. It manufactures nasal snuff in
small quantities. Swedish Match also sells matches, cigars and pipe
tobacco in New Zealand.
End Smoking NZ has no financial relationship
with the smokeless tobacco industry.
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The potential
for reduced harm products
It is not that we use tobacco
or nicotine that kills us, it is that we inhale
the smoke, that kills us. In Sweden men use more tobacco but only half of it is
smoked – they put it under their lip as snus, where it does not
cause lung cancer. Swedish men enjoy one of the lowest lung cancer rates in
the Western world- due to those who still smoke.
End Smoking NZ is
well aware how cigarettes can be designed to obtain low tar readings from
smoking machines. Several End Smoking NZ trustees have met with
scientists in several cigarette transnationals.
The same tobacco company officials have also met with the NZ Ministry of
Health. End Smoking NZ concludes that
- Smokers’
safety is more likely
to come from switching away from smoking cigarettes to smokeless
tobacco products (or even better, to pure nicotine), rather than
chase the “safer cigarette” mirage. Even if cigarette
smoking risk could be halved, one in four smokers would die a
cigarette-caused death.
- Smokeless
tobacco products
(snuffs) have a death risk that is about 5% of the risk from cigarettes,
assuming that regulations permitted only lowest-risk snuff products
to be imported. (Levy 2004)
- New
inhalables such as nicotine
“cigarettes” or e-cigarettes, have a risk of about 1%
that of cigarettes.
End Smoking NZ, supports
a)
a wider range of non-smoking
products on sale for smokers to choose from, and
b)
preservation
of personal freedoms to import any
nicotine or tobacco product for personal use, but not to on-sell.
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The medical profession
- 1962 The medical profession lobbied for and obtained a ban on
television advertising of cigarettes.
- 1996. (Census) Few doctors smoke. (5%).
- 1999 The NZ Medical Association supported the AMA-BMA proposal
for gradual removal of nicotine from cigarettes. New Zealand could
still be the first country to make a start on this policy. (Henningfield,
Benowitz, Slade et al. Reducing
the addictiveness of cigarettes. 1998. www.tobaccocontrol.com
- 2001 A thousand doctors’ signatures in support of
smokefree workplaces were collected in just six weeks by Doctors for
Smokefree New Zealand, founded by two End Smoking NZ
trustees.
End Smoking NZ will continue
to work closely with the medical profession to promote faster reduction
of smoking.
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Other non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) opposed to smoking
·
Virtually all NGOs working to reduce smoking support the
government-approved current comprehensive tobacco control programme
– as does End Smoking NZ. This includes graphic warnings on
cigarette packets.
·
NGOs have worked together closely in supporting government
legislation in past years. End Smoking NZ hopes this will continue. There
is no clear road map, however, for the years ahead.
- End
Smoking NZ says fresh policies are now needed to make the
comprehensive programme more effective in reducing smoking; in
particular policies giving smokers greater freedom of choice in
quitting.
- End
Smoking NZ opposes cigarettes and other smoking tobacco products,
but regards nicotine, extracted from tobacco, and smokeless tobacco
products as potentially useful to assist smokers to quit.
End Smoking NZ will work closely with all
NGOs opposed to smoking, and invites other agencies to adopt the policies
proposed..
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Community groups
As in securing the 1990 Smokefree Environments legislation, a
wide range of community groups will be needed to ensure parliamentary
support. We invite all such groups to make contact. www.endsmoking.org.nz/orgs.htm
End Smoking NZ will work with all groups to
phase out cigarette smoking, as a catalyst, and policy
resource and networker.
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