Comment by Matsta | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Matsta | Hacker News Reader

I mentioned this already in a comment, but although this is a good law, the price of cigarettes is so high that most people have already moved to disposable vapes, which you can get from any Dairy (Kiwi word for a corner shop).

To top that off, Crime in NZ post covid has been pretty high, and Ram Raids (driving a stolen car through a shop front) are becoming more and more frequent. With cigarettes being so expensive, they are usually a pretty common target. A dairy worker was stabbed to death a few weeks ago by people who were probably intending to steal cigarettes [1]. I can see less and less retailers stocking cigarettes as the risks outweigh the benefits.

Also, the price of groceries in NZ is extortionate [2] and combined with crappy wages (every man and his dog are moving to Aus to double their salary), no one can afford to buy cigarettes.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Sandringham_dairy_stabbin... [2] https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-drink/128200443/how-...

> Crime in NZ post covid has been pretty high

Crime in NZ has been trending downwards for over a decade. There has been an increase in certain types of crime, so if cherry picking, increasing crime can be made a thing. Not true tho.

> . A dairy worker was stabbed to death a few weeks ago by people...

They stole the cash register, not the cigarettes.

> Also, the price of groceries in NZ is extortionate

Yes. Far too high, a very profitable business with many barriers to entry

> combined with crappy wages (every man and his dog are moving to Aus to double their salary),

This man and dog is not leaving! That was true for many decades. Ever since the neoliberal reforms that were introduced in NZ with no planning or intelligence (cratered , but it has started to turn around recently. Wages going up in NZ and Ozzie is entering some sort of very strange twilight zone.

Is this a good law? It depends. Prohibition has a very bad history. This is a different approach, so maybe

Crime in NZ has been trending downwards for over a decade.

Reported crime does not equal actual crime. With police response time in the hours range, and a lack of prosecution, people increasingly don't bother reporting crime at all.

I remember once the emergency operator pretty much said "look it's going to take a couple of hours, do you really want to bother going through with this?". This was in a city about 2km from the police station.

Out of curiosity, what was the crime they didn't want to go through with?

Palmerston North.

Lived in Auckland in 2014 and again in 2020. The difference was massive. Suddenly every convenience store had plastic barriers protecting the workers from stabbing. Places in the CBD that used to be OK to hang out were suddenly not.

But we're constantly gas-lighted into being told we're all imagining it, as police presence has all but disappeared (lots of "community officers" though).

Not true

Some things have gotten worse, some better.

Where I live in Ōtepoti a "one way door" policy on local bars at night has made a huge difference

The data is clear, crime is going down. It is possible to cherry pick the stats and find parts of crime going up, but generally down

What was the specific crime committed though?

> Reported crime does not equal actual crime. With police response time in the hours range, and a lack of prosecution, people increasingly don't bother reporting crime at all.

Yes.

There is much more reporting now. Many domestic assaults for example.

Albeit an anecdote you have....

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