Tag: New Zealand

  • New Year celebrations

    New Year celebrations

    Smokers in New Zealand were hit in their pockets from yesterday with the introduction of a 10 percent tobacco excise tax increase, according to a Television New Zealand story.

    The increase will push the price of a 25-piece pack of cigarettes toward NZ$40, nearly four times the 2006 price of NZ$11.95.

    The move is purported to be aimed at reducing the incidence of smoking, which is now believed to be about 16 percent.

    Since January 2010, the Government has increased tobacco excise by at least CPI (consumer price index) plus 10 percent each year; so the tax on a single cigarette has gone from 30 cents to 82 cents since 2009.

    The current series of tax increases is scheduled to end in 2020.

  • Quitting off target

    Quitting off target

    Another 17,200 New Zealanders need to quit tobacco smoking each year until 2025 if the country is to reach its goal of having under five percent of the population smoking daily by then, according to a story by Amy Wiggins at nzherald.co.nz, citing the results of a new study.
    The 17,200 figure is more than double the current quit rate, the study, published in Friday’s New Zealand Medical Journal, reported.
    The research, headed by Professor Nick Wilson of the department of public health at Otago University’s Wellington campus, found the country was set to fall far short of the Smoke-free Aotearoa 2025 goal if the current trend continues.
    It was estimated that, in line with the current trend, 17.4 percent of Māori and 7.2 percent of non-Māori people would be smoking in 2025.
    To reach the 2025 target, it would be necessary to increase the number of long-term quitters by an average of 8,400 in the case of Māori and 8,800 in the case of non-Māori.
    The authors estimated Quitline and funded face-to-face smoking cessation services helped 8,100 people quit each year – 2,000 Māori and 6,100 non-Māori.
    That was 19 percent of the Māori quitters and 34 percent of the non-Māori quitters needed each year to reach the 2025 goal.
    Based on these figures, the authors concluded that an unrealistically large increase in the use of cessation services would be needed to meet the target; so other strategies were needed.
    They proposed the continuation of large tax increases on tobacco, extra funding for cessation services and advertising campaigns, and subsidies to help people switch to electronic cigarettes.

  • Quitting by default

    Quitting by default

    Changing the way tobacco is retailed would be a crucial step in achieving the New Zealand Government’s 2025 smoke-free goal, new research by the University of Otago suggests.
    If the Government prevented new retail outlets from selling tobacco, while allowing existing retailers to continue selling tobacco until they closed or relocated, it could achieve a 50 percent reduction in tobacco outlets by 2032, the research, just published in the medical journal Tobacco Control, is said to have shown.
    One of the study’s authors, co-director of the Cancer Society Social and Behavioural Research Unit at the university’s Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, Dr. Louise Marsh, said achieving this reduction would “likely help lower smoking prevalence and health inequities”.
    “This approach would not achieve New Zealand’s endgame goal of reducing tobacco availability to minimal levels by 2025, nor the sector’s target of a 95 percent reduction in outlet density by 2022, but would nonetheless result in a significant advancement from the status quo,” she was quoted as saying in a piece posted on the university’s website.
    Decreasing the number of outlets that stock tobacco would help reduce youth smoking initiation and enable smokers to quit ‘more easily’, Marsh and her colleague, Dr. Lindsay Robertson, formerly from the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, concluded.
    The researchers examined the impact of a hypothetical policy that, from 2020, banned new retail outlets from selling tobacco. Under the policy, existing retailers would be allowed to continue selling tobacco until they closed their outlets or moved to a different location, when they could no longer sell from the new location.
    The study used Stats NZ data on the number of tobacco outlets between 2006 and 2016 (supermarkets, convenience stores, service stations and liquor stores only), and the rate at which these stores closed or relocated.
    Based on mean annual closure rates, the total number of tobacco outlets would decrease by 27 percent by 2025, 50 percent by 2032 and 84 percent by 2050.

  • Call for ban by 2025

    Call for ban by 2025

    The government of New Zealand will have to ban the sale of cigarettes if it wants to reach its goal of making the country tobacco-smoke-free by 2025, MPs have been told, according to a story in The New Zealand Herald.
    Public health advocates and academics said also that the government needed to encourage more aggressively less harmful alternatives to smoking, such as vaping.
    At a briefing on the Smokefree 2025 target at Parliament, Lance Norman, the chief executive of the Māori public health organization, Hapai Te Hauora, said there was no way the target would be reached on existing settings.
    Ministry of Health figures show nearly 16 percent of New Zealanders smoke, including 35 percent of Māori and 25 percent of Pacific Islanders.
    The overall rate has fallen from 20.1 per cent in 2006.
    The smokefree target set by the government requires smoking rates to fall below five percent by 2025.
    “We are nowhere near that,” Norman said. “Saying it’s a train wreck for Māori would be an understatement.”
    His organization made three recommendations to MPs if they wanted to reach the goal:

    • Urgently encourage harm minimization products such as e-cigarettes;
    • Ban the sale of cigarettes by 2025;
    • Spend more of the revenue from tobacco excise tax on promoting harm-minimization products and supporting vulnerable families.
  • HNB decision unchallenged

    HNB decision unchallenged

    New Zealand’s Ministry of Heath has abandoned its legal fight to stop a tobacco company importing and selling heat-not-burn (HNB) tobacco sticks, according to a story on Radio New Zealand (RNZ).
    Last month, the Wellington District Court dismissed the Ministry’s case against Phillip Morris, ruling the product, HEETS, did not come under the Smoke-Free Environment Act’s ban on tobacco products for chewing or other oral use.
    The Ministry has decided not to appeal the decision.
    The products will be subject to some of the regulatory controls that apply to combustible cigarettes; so they cannot be sold to minors and their advertising is restricted.
    But unlike combustible cigarettes, vaping and HNB devices can be used indoors in public places.
    The Ministry said it was now considering how best to regulate vaping devices and HNB products.
    Meanwhile, a Scoop story in April said that the legality of selling nicotine vaping products in New Zealand remained in doubt.
    The previous National-led government claimed nicotine-vaping products could not be legally imported into and sold in New Zealand, but last year promised new regulations to allow the sale of nicotine e-cigarettes and e-liquids.
    And at the beginning of April, National MP Nicky Wagner, who championed the promised law change, introduced a private member’s bill to try to get vaping back on the Labour-led government’s agenda.
    But vaping researcher, Professor Marewa Glover, of Massey University’s School of Health Sciences, said that six months into the new Labour-led government’s term, all Associate Minister of Health Jenny Salesa had said on the matter was that she didn’t know what the government’s position on e-cigarettes was going to be.

  • Pitching up for litter

    Pitching up for litter

    The average distance New Zealanders are prepared to walk to a bin to dispose of their rubbish is 8.4 meters; so littering rises dramatically beyond this distance, according to a story by Stuart Mitchell for Ethical Marketing News citing the results of research commissioned by Keep New Zealand Beautiful (KNZB).
    Forty four percent of those surveyed littered within five meters of their nearest bin.
    But the research revealed that ninety three percent of people think it is important for New Zealand to maintain its clean, green image.
    KNZB recently launched an anti-litter campaign after its volunteers, during one week-long clean-up, collected enough rubbish to cover 120 rugby fields up to half a meter in depth.
    The KNZB research showed the top items littered in public places by New Zealanders were cigarette butts, which comprised 78 percent of litter, followed by takeaway packaging, which comprised five percent. It was not stated on which basis the litter was measured – whether by number of pieces, volume or weight.
    KNZB CEO Heather Saunderson was quoted as saying that the next stage of the campaign would involve its partnering with Stats NZ, the Ministry for the Environment and the Department of Conservation, to launch a Tier 1 National Litter Audit that would physically inspect litter in areas such as motorways, rest stops, residential streets, beaches, rural and industrial locations.

  • NZ indecisive on e-cigs

    NZ indecisive on e-cigs

    New Zealand’s government-funded stop smoking services will keep losing customers if they refuse to help people who want to try vaping, according to a press note issued by Massey University and published by Scoop.
    The services are said to be in a bind, however, because the legality of selling nicotine vaping products in New Zealand remains in doubt.
    The previous National-led government claimed nicotine-vaping products could not be legally imported into and sold in New Zealand, but last year promised new regulations to allow the sale of nicotine e-cigarettes and e-liquids.
    Last week National MP Nicky Wagner, who championed the promised law change, introduced a private member’s bill to try to get vaping back on the Labour-led government’s agenda.
    Vaping researcher, Professor Marewa Glover, of Massey University’s School of Health Sciences, said that six months into the new Labour-led government’s term, all Associate Minister of Health Jenny Salesa had said on the matter was that she didn’t know what the government’s position on e-cigarettes was going to be.
    “Two weeks ago, Judge Patrick Butler dismissed a Ministry of Health case against tobacco giant Philip Morris on the grounds that the IQOS Heets product could not be considered a ‘chewing’ tobacco product, which would be banned under the Smoke-Free Environments Act [SFEA],” Glover said. “His ruling could equally apply to nicotine vaping products, meaning they can be legally imported and sold in New Zealand.
    “Of greater significance, he concluded that the Ministry of Health’s prosecution, which sought to restrict smokers’ access to an alternative less harmful product was the ‘opposite of what parliament sought to achieve when passing the SFEA’.”
    Judge Butler’s questioning of the health authority’s attempt to undermine people’s chance to stop smoking by switching to the use of a reduced-harm product mirrors the perceptions of vapers reported in a new research paper by Trish Fraser of Global Public Health, and Glover and Dr. Penelope Truman of Massey University’s College of Health.
    The full story is at: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE1804/S00011/stop-smoking-services-called-upon-to-support-vaping.htm

  • HEETS-ban case dismissed

    HEETS-ban case dismissed

    A Ministry of Health claim that a heated-tobacco product was banned under New Zealand law has been dismissed by a judge sitting alone in the District Court of Wellington.
    The case, brought against Philip Morris New Zealand (PMNZ) in respect of HEETS, the consumable item of PM’s IQOS system, claimed that the product was banned under the Smoke-Free Environment Act, which bans tobacco products used for chewing or any other oral use (other than smoking).
    But Judge Patrick Butler found that HEETS were not caught within the ambit of s 29 (2) of the Act and dismissed the charge.
    While welcoming the decision, PMNZ’s general manager Jason Erickson said the case highlighted the need for urgent reform of regulations surrounding e-cigarettes and other smokeless tobacco products.
    “To achieve the Smokefree 2025 goal, men and women who smoke in New Zealand need freely available information and access to a range of better alternatives to cigarettes, including nicotine-containing electronic cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products such as HEETS,” he said.

  • Tobacco ≠ cigarettes

    Tobacco ≠ cigarettes

    NZ Smokeless Tobacco Co (NZSTC) has said it is appalled by the lack of ideas being put forward by the New Zealand government to fast track the race for ‘Smoke-free 2025’.
    “Our organisation has approached both health ministers regarding Nationals New Pathway to Smokeless Alternatives and Nicotine Delivery Products and their replies were, ‘I am still considering the proposals from the previous government’ which quite frankly is not good enough!,” said Miles Illemann, co-founder of NZSTC.
    In a press note, NZSTC acknowledged that New Zealand was suffering a crime wave underpinned by the cigarette black market, but, it added, having organizations such as Action on Smoking and Health and British American Tobacco arguing over spilt milk was not helping.
    ‘We need change and that’s what New Zealanders want, like the NZDF [New Zealand Defence Force] going smoke-free in 2020 …,’ the note said.
    ‘NZSTC wants to clear up a few things when talking about tobacco. Firstly, it is cigarettes causing the deaths. Yes, they are tobacco, but it is the way … [in] which it is consumed that is the problem. If we look at the “Swedish Experience” regarding oral tobacco like snus, studies show that it is the most effective way to quit smoking with no risk of cancer. Therefore, cigarettes should be the word of choice used to attack the problem because if we are wanting this government to change, we need to remove the stigma that cigarettes have on tobacco.
    ‘If we look at Norway for example, we see that by snus being readily available to smokers, the ability to change the statistics around to meet our goals in 2025 is quite possible. It’s not going to happen from plain packaging or any other way except for healthy alternatives to nicotine through a harm reduction strategy.
    ‘Let’s remember that we are living in a democracy, people have the freedom of choice. We shouldn’t be thinking about taking things away from the people but giving them more healthy options like we have seen in the past with e-cigarettes.’

  • The law is a butt

    The law is a butt

    The New Zealand government has been criticised for going ahead with the prosecution of a tobacco company while acknowledging that the law on which the case is based needs to be updated.
    In a press note, the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union (NZTU) said that the 1990 legislation, written for chewing tobacco, might inadvertently ban new heat-not-burn products – a matter that was currently before the courts.
    Citing a Stuff report, the NZTU quoted the Ministry of Health’s prosecutor as saying that the legislation needed to be brought up to date and that these changes were “in train”.
    “The current law is cruel – smokers are taxed into poverty, and then told that alternatives, such as e-cigarettes and heat-not-burns, are illegal,” said the NZTU’s executive director Jordan Williams. “The Ministry acknowledges the law is outdated, so why proceed with court action?
    “Every e-cigarette retailer and consumer has reason to worry when the Ministry of Health is taking criminal prosecutions while even acknowledging that the law is an arse.
    “With the Ministry making this acknowledgement, the only reason the Government has left to not change the law is its addiction to tobacco taxes.”
    A New Zealand Herald story reported on here yesterday, said that the court case involved Philip Morris defending two charges over the sale of its HEETS tobacco sticks that are used in its IQOS electronic heated-tobacco device.
    If the ministry proved that this product was for oral use, but not smoking, that would make its sale illegal under current New Zealand law.
    Health ministry prosecutor Sally Carter was said to have told the Wellington District Court that the issue came down to legal fine print.
    “It’s the heat sticks that contain tobacco, and there’s no problem that this product contains tobacco,” she said. “The real problem is whether this product falls within the Smokefree [Environments] Act 1990.
    “Significantly, because of the way the Act is structured there are issues whether in fact the product is a smoking issue, and a smoking product.
    “The definition of ‘to smoke’ means that the product needs to be ignited.”
    Philip Morris was said to be defending the charges, arguing that HEETS comprise a smoking product, even though the tobacco in them is heated, not burned.