New Zealand scraps world-first smoking ‘generation ban’ to fund tax cuts
New Zealand scraps world-first smoking ‘generation ban’ to fund tax cuts
Health experts say axing plan to block sales of tobacco products to next generation will cost thousands of lives
Health experts say axing plan to block sales of tobacco products to next generation will cost thousands of lives
Tobacco tax revenue is the best example of accepting a price on lives lost
This is the best summary I could come up with:
New Zealand’s new government will scrap the country’s world-leading law to ban smoking for future generations to help pay for tax cuts – a move that public health officials believe will cost thousands of lives and be “catastrophic” for Māori communities.
National has had to find new ways to fund its tax plan, after its coalition partner, New Zealand First, rejected a proposal to let foreign buyers back into the property market.
“Coming back to those extra sources of revenue and other savings areas that will help us to fund the tax reduction, we have to remember that the changes to the smoke-free legislation had a significant impact on the Government books – with about $1bn there.”
But public health experts have expressed shock at the policy reversal, saying it could cost up to 5,000 lives a year, and be particularly detrimental to Māori, who have higher smoking rates.
Te Morenga highlighted recent modelling that showed the regulations would save $1.3bn in health system costs over the next 20 years, if fully implemented, and would reduce mortality rates by 22% for women, and 9% for men.
“This move suggests a disregard for the voices of the communities most affected by tobacco harm – favouring economic interests,” said chief executive Jason Alexander.
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Smoking and vaping is a fantastic ‘red flag’ to warn of the otherwise potentially unobserved fuckwititis that many people suffer from.
I hate when articles say "will cost X number of lives". No it won't. It will cut them short, it will costs years off people's lives. Unless it's sterilized people it won't cost lives.
A person may die at 40 instead of 80 but that is still a life.
You could say this about anything though. A serial killer isn't taking lives, merely shortening them. Suicide isn't ending a life it's just shortening one. Literally all death can be seen as merely the shortening of an otherwise longer life, which makes your distinction pointless.
You bring up a good point, what does it actually mean? If eight people have their lives shortened by a decade, is that one life lost or eight?
To make it more complicated does every decade matter the same? Does your twenty's when you are out partying matter as much as your thirty/forties when you are most profitable for your capitalist overloads? What about your nineties when you are frail of health but hopefully surrounded by loved ones?
Good. Government shouldn't be telling people what they do with their bodies.
Seatbelts greatly upset you don’t they?
Seatbelts save significant medical costs that the government has to pay for. Cigarettes do not, as the medical cost has already been paid by said smoker 10 times over due to outrageous taxes.
Smoking bans are a severe government overreach, and I will celebrate every time one gets slapped down.
I'd say that I'm okay with that sentiment as long as there is a ban in public places.
I'm 100% okay keeping it out of public spaces.
But the government picks up the payment costs, and the other costs include reduced hospital spaces, which directly impacts other people.
I understand your perspective if people are truly independent of one another, but we’re not. We rely on one another and impact each other. That means a reduction in freedom for an increase in security.
I do wish there were a way to opt out, so that people could do whatever they want with their own bodies without harming others, but we’re not there now, so we shouldn’t just accept a reduction in our ability to receive treatment we’re entitled to, to enable freedoms that don’t fit our actual system.
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I used to think so too. But the fault her is the governments dependance on the tax revenue. They will keep raising taxes, putting those choosing to smoke up with ever slightly increasing cost of living, boiling them like a frog.
As a smoker of twenty years who stopped over a year ago. Thank fuck I beat that addiction, they aren't getting my money anymore.