New Zealand scraps world-first smoking 'generation ban' to fund tax cuts | Hacker News Reader

New Zealand scraps world-first smoking 'generation ban' to fund tax cuts

theguardian.com

18 pointspopcalc27 comments

Personal liberty arguments and all that aside, this comes across like the NZ government actually wanting people to smoke, so the tax income can fund tax cuts elsewhere. Quite sinister.

It's also wildly hypocritical regarding cannabis, which is just as much a drug and could provide huge tax windfalls besides cutting out the gang profits and enforcing safety/quality standards, but nooooo, just can't do that, simply impossible.

(Also New Zealander here, weird how many of us suddenly appear to post!)

Not just wanting people to smoke, but wanting to get young people addicted. It's awful.

wanting to get young people addicted so that they can be taxed.

it’s awful without the taxation, but that detail extends a message they didn’t have enough sense to hold back or at least sanitize - citizens live and die for the state, it does not exist for them, and the youth aren’t special in that regard - they were just an overlooked resource that wasn’t fully squeezed yet. and why wait until adulthood?

That's exactly what it is; the money they plan to acquire through this will be used to pay for the flagship taxcut policy of the largest of the three parties in the new coalition government (the National Party).

I have my share of issues from a personal liberty standpoint, but I know what selling us out to the tobacco companies looks like. (3rd rank National Party member is a former Philip Morris employee, and the second largest party, the ACT Party has a cutout org called 'NZ Taxpayers' Union' has been exposed in the past for taking tobacco industry money, which would be bad enough, but doing so while simultaneously running campaigns related to e-cigarettes)

Pretty much - the new gov campaigned for tax cuts and refused to tell anyone how they'd pay for it... and now we know.

Tax cuts for most will be negligible amounts, and the long term health costs seem to be ignored (even though we have a public health system!).

Very short term thinking to the benefit of tobacco companies and some short term increase in tax revenues (cigarettes are highly taxed in NZ).

Oh, they've also decided to bring back pseudoephedrine tablets too - which prior to being banned had meth cooks paying swarms of people $20 a pack for a quick trip to the pharmacy.

Interesting policies!

> they've also decided to bring back pseudoephedrine tablets too

I dislike many of their policies but I'm not convinced this one is wrongheaded.

While meth (called 'P' in New Zealand) was often manufactured from pseudoephedrine tablets here, the outright ban on this medication did not seem to have succeeded in lowering the availability of P in the country; after an initial rise in price and reports of lowering of purity, the street price has overall dropped from around 700 NZD / gram in 2009 to around 400 NZD / gram today, as described here[1]

[1] https://newsroom.co.nz/2023/09/26/pseudoregulation-the-failu...

It's just a strange policy for the parties to bring out as soon as they get into government - kind of like a back-door to taxing meth production (not sure how the economics work, but am I wrong?).

Especially given Act and National's "hard stance on gangs and crime" you have to wonder where their incentives lie.

Over here in the States our FDA has finally admitted that the pseudoephedrine replacements are medically ineffective and only work to generate pharma profits.

“For a long time, over-the-counter decongestant products like Sudafed had pseudoephedrine in them. Pseudoephedrine is effective at reducing sinus congestion during colds but is also an ingredient that can be used to make methamphetamine. As a result of abuse of pseudoephedrine-containing products by manufacturers of methamphetamine, federal legislation was passed moving those products behind the pharmacy counter, which made them harder for people to get ahold of for routine use. Since companies would prefer to sell products that people can just easily grab off the shelves, Sudafed and other well-known brands introduced new formulations with another very old over-the-counter active ingredient, phenylephrine. The problem is that phenylephrine doesn’t work, as the FDA finally concluded, unless you directly spritz it onto your nasal passages as with Afrin or products like that.”

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/09/why-are-ineff...

> only work to generate pharma profits

But they would have profited anyway with the pseudoephedrine tablets.

I understand they're an effective treatment, the problem I see is that they end up in the wrong hands and pharmacies end up being broken into.

In NZ we've had a problem in the past couple years of people doing "ram raids" which is basically people stealing cars and smashing them through buildings to steal things as well.

Taking everything into account, to me it seems the downsides outweigh the upsides of selling these tablets.

> Very short term thinking

What actual evidence do you base this on? The South African government banned cigarette sale during the lockdowns. Evidence suggests that black market cigarette sales surged and failed to return to previous levels after the ban was lifted.

The economic concern with banning cigarettes is you will have similar numbers of people smoking, but now you've lost the tax revenue on sales while you still have to carry the healthcare costs. You also have increased costs related to policing and adjudicating the ban.

New Zealand has public healthcare. Around 5000 people die here per year as a result of smoking, which reduces any taxes those people would have paid had they not died, as well as costing tax payers for the time they spend in hospital.

The ban on cigarettes here wasn't to be an outright ban but one staggered over a number of years.

There's been a gradual decline of smokers in NZ over the years, so there is some evidence that such laws could be helpful rather than simply creating a black market.

https://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/healthy-living/addict....

https://www.smokefree.org.nz/smoking-its-effects/facts-figur...

> Quite sinister

I won't say it's not sinister, but surely it's not surprising? Every government with public health care is currently balancing the costs of treating smoking related illnesses with the amount of tax money tobacco brings in.

It's pragmatism rather than anything truly evil. Countries are big things to run ;)

And ... the medical costs of tens of thousands of lung cancer treatments per year will be coming from those tax-cuts then?

That is the balancing act I spoke of, yes ;)

I'm a New Zealander too. I don't really see that this is going to improve their tax position much. How many folks turning 16 are going to take up cigarettes over vaping?

I mean, I agree, their position is stupid and if they already had a problem where they were reversing every policy of the previous govt regardless of merit, this compounds it by taking on a broadly popular idea.

However, I'm not all that comfortable with the ban. I don't smoke, I don't want my kids to smoke... but it still doesn't sit that well with me that you aren't allowed to.

I hate that we've voted in this awful right wing coalition because Labour was underdelivering. I don't see that either big party has any answers to the problems in NZ society right now - housing everyone and being able to see a doctor in good time. They both just piss around at the edges making inconsequential changes and messing with the curriculum. So I either have to be annoyed we have a govt that wants no change at all or a govt that wants change but cannot actually implement anything.

Kiwi here. I'm furious over this. It is such an insane short-sighted choice, I can't see any reasonable explanation for it other than corruption.

Long term it's going to cost us quite a bit more money in healthcare costs.

They're blaming NZF and Act but it's not terribly convincing when National have a former tobacco lobbyist in their ranks.

Long term it's going to cost us quite a bit more money in healthcare costs

No. Smokers die younger than non-smokers and usually of short-lived (i.e., cheap) illnesses. It is generally non-smokers that have the 10-15 years of dementia that really crushes the finances of a health system.

We're getting better at prolonging the lives of the terminally ill, especially with the newer cancer drugs coming onto the market. 20-30 years from now today's short-lived and cheap illnesses will become a significant burden on the health system.

By which time non-smokers will have their lives extended too, so 15-20 years of dementia and the corresponding costs. Sign me up!

Lots of outrage, but where is the pragmatic reality? Prohibition didn't eliminate alcohol. The "War on Drugs" has been a spectacular failure.

Surely it makes better sense to tax this behaviour and try to mitigate the harm caused?

The U.K. did a good job with this. The number of smokers there nowadays is way down from when I was a teen, thanks mainly to simple changes.

The most effective of which is where you are allowed to smoke. Public spaces like cafe and restaurant terraces were made smoke-free, and it made a dramatic difference.

Here in the Netherlands, they've made no such change, and it shows. People smoke _everywhere_. I'll admit that as an ex-smoker I'm likely more militant about these things, but I really don't think it's okay to smoke outside a children's school for during pickup, or at a cafe when people are eating. It's like the outside summer days are reserved just for smokers, since nobody else wants to be around that.

Anyway, ranting aside, I'd say the pragmatic reality is what the U.K. has done.

> People smoke _everywhere_.

According to [1], smoking is relatively uncommon in NL compared to most EU countries (which matches my experience), and at the same level as the UK. However, I think it might depend on where you are within the country.

> I really don't think it's okay to smoke outside a children's school for during pickup

It is in fact prohibited to smoke on school squares in the Netherlands [2]. Whether that's enforced is another matter, of course.

Smoking is also prohibited inside in cafes and restaurants. I'd be happy if that were extended to terraces (or just everywhere), but with the party for "freedom" winning the election it seems unlikely.

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/433390/individuals-who-c...

[2]: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/roken/vraag-en-antw...

> According to [1], smoking is relatively uncommon in NL compared to most EU countries

I don't know, must be regional differences like you say. I'm in the Randstad, though when I go on holiday down south I also experience it.

as always, Yes, Prime Minister covered this 40 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1DviQ9mva0

The new right wing political party that’s now in power is to thank for this. Unfortunately they the votes of the rural farmers and capitalists and have a long history of privatising publicly owned assets and putting business ahead of people.

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