Clean Green New Zealand Puts its Foot Down on Tobacco
But has it put its foot in it?
Food for Thought
In the world of health, tobacco isn’t exactly a controversial topic. We are all well aware of its harms and carcinogenic qualities. But in the world of health policy, tougher and broader bans on tobacco use are on the rise, and not everyone is a fan.
In New Zealand’s case, years of anti-smoking campaigns and educational programmes in schools, as well as hefty tobacco taxes, have put the vast majority off smoking - only 8% of the general population in New Zealand still smoke. That’s fewer smokers per capita than any European country, and a total number of smokers of around 330,000 people. Compared to Germany with a per capita rate of 15.7% , adding up to around 13 million smokers, it’s not exactly a crisis-level issue in New Zealand. However, the previous government claimed that smokers create undue pressure on an already struggling healthcare system, with most lifelong smokers ending up with heart conditions, strokes, or some form of cancer.
On top of that, smoking is one of the factors where Pākehā (non-indigenous New Zealanders) and Māori (indigenous New Zealanders) diverge starkly, transforming it into an indigenous issue. The blanket ban on cigarettes should improve health outcomes for Māori and Pasifika minorities in New Zealand, according to the Labour Party, but fails to address why Māori and Pasifika are overrepresented in smoking statistics: Smoking, like many other negative health indicators, is predicted by social class.
A 2020 cross-sectional study of smokers in England found that those who were renting (instead of owning their own home) were twice as likely to be smokers. Beyond that, the odds that one will not become a smoker, increase with tertiary-level education and higher incomes. So, smoking is actually a symptom of unequal outcomes, not a cause. It goes without saying, that tackling poverty in New Zealand and income inequality will have a greater impact on smoking rates (and health outcomes for Māori and Pasifika) than a blanket ban. Besides, haven’t they ever heard that smoking is an addiction?
Let’s talk about Bhutan. Since their 2004 ban on tobacco sales and 2010 escalation to prohibit the cultivation, manufacture, supply and sale of tobacco products (as well as banning advertisements, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco products on TV and in film), the tobacco consumption rate per capita continues to hover around the 30% mark. Moving the sale of tobacco products from over-the-counter to under-the-counter led to an increase in tobacco use among 13 to 15-year-olds.
While bans on smoking in public areas did cause a shift from smoking tobacco to chewing tobacco, this did nothing to reduce the tobacco smuggling trade from India into Bhutan, which is what ultimately led to the lifting of the ban in 2019. The huge volume of illegal trade and smuggling between India and Bhutan suddenly meant a critical risk of spreading the virus across borders during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving the government no choice but to lift the ban that had been in place for 15 years.
The WHO writes in its report “The Big Ban: Bhutan’s journey toward a tobacco-free society” that the lifting of the ban couldn’t have come soon enough, with growing discontentment among Bhutanese about the harsh penalties for possessing even small amounts of tobacco and the large number of arrests and imprisonments for tobacco-related crimes.
Although praised at the time as a David-and-Goliath situation, with the Bhutanese government taking on Big Tobacco and renouncing their support for such a harmful activity, the Nanny-State approach was largely unsuccessful. And not least because it failed to acknowledge tobacco consumption as nicotine dependence - dependence on a substance as addictive as cocaine. And that’s where we come full circle.
New Zealand’s ban is a special one. Instead of banning the sale and supply of tobacco to people of all ages, the plan was to gradually increase the legal age for smoking by one year, each year. In effect, if you were born on or after January 1 2009, when you turn 18, the legal smoking age will be 19, and when you’re 64, the legal smoking age will be 65. The idea being, to create a new generation of people who will never take up the habit! How great!
The funny part though, is that New Zealand was already well on its way to achieving this smoke-free generation without the ban at all. Attitudes towards smoking were already at an all-time low among young people, until smoking got the rebrand it really needed: candy floss and pineapple ice, blue raspberry and mint choc chip! Vaping turned it all around. Kids who would never have picked up a cigarette were introduced to a cheaper, cooler and fun-er alternative!
After decades of downwards-trending nicotine consumption in New Zealand, it is now back on the rise. The legalisation of electronic cigarettes and vaping products in New Zealand in 2018 was supposed to be a conscious decision to promote vaping as a cessation tool for those wanting to quit smoking.
By the time regulations on advertising were put into place in 2020, a lot of the damage had already been done. 7000 vape stores have opened across the nation (that’s one store per 600 adults) and vapes are still being sold with up to 60 milligrams of nicotine (capped at 20mg here in the European Union). The number of children being suspended from not only high schools but even primary schools in New Zealand has led to this being widely regarded as a vaping epidemic.
So, what’s the takeaway? New Zealand should have done its research, but hopefully, the UK will do better with its new smoking ban. Nope. There is serious doubt that any nanny-state policy like this will be successful. We’ve talked about prohibition before… With alcohol, remember? That didn’t go so well.
Life isn’t perfect, and people have vices. While we can all agree that smoking tobacco and consuming alcohol are forms of self-harm, people still retain the right to participate in them. Education is the most that we can do. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink: and that’s the way it should be.
