They're going to ban tobacco sales in 2025. The reason? While the government take in 1.2 billion a year in tobacco revenue they spend an estimated 1.9 billion on healthcare for smoking related illnesses.
The plan is to slowly inhibit tobacco sales by spending money on subsidies for quit-line, nicotine replacement and councilors, banning packaging on tobacco, banning tobacco displays at retail stores, funding public education programmes, increasing taxes etc... They're going to spend a ton of money now in the hopes of reducing smoking later.
Currently 21% of adults in New Zealand smoke.
They want to get it down to 5% before banning it.
The 79% of New Zealand adults who don't smoke (me included recently) are going to be paying for the majority of this, even more costs that they have to face because the government won't make people take responsibility for the health decisions that are in their control, like smoking, over-eating, laziness, recklessness.
Fuck the cunts, it's a crap excuse for more authoritarianism. If they're really worried about the costs they should do the damn sensible thing, make people who smoke pay for their smoking related illnesses, but this isn't about that, it's about the Government wanting to define the image of the country, get everything looking like their fantasy - The same old delusion that Government knows best and we have no business making our own decisions, they're going to make them for us.
Again, Fuck them.
/Rant.
The plan is to slowly inhibit tobacco sales by spending money on subsidies for quit-line, nicotine replacement and councilors, banning packaging on tobacco, banning tobacco displays at retail stores, funding public education programmes, increasing taxes etc... They're going to spend a ton of money now in the hopes of reducing smoking later.
Currently 21% of adults in New Zealand smoke.
They want to get it down to 5% before banning it.
The 79% of New Zealand adults who don't smoke (me included recently) are going to be paying for the majority of this, even more costs that they have to face because the government won't make people take responsibility for the health decisions that are in their control, like smoking, over-eating, laziness, recklessness.
Fuck the cunts, it's a crap excuse for more authoritarianism. If they're really worried about the costs they should do the damn sensible thing, make people who smoke pay for their smoking related illnesses, but this isn't about that, it's about the Government wanting to define the image of the country, get everything looking like their fantasy - The same old delusion that Government knows best and we have no business making our own decisions, they're going to make them for us.
Again, Fuck them.
/Rant.
.