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NZ First leader Winston Peter has announced the party’s anti-smoking policy, but not before he has been criticized for his own smoking.
One of the pillars of the announcement is that it will lower the price of a pack of cigarettes.
“We need to stop punishing smokers with high excise taxes and help them quit by offering affordable alternatives,” he said at the election campaign in Tūrangi on Thursday.
The party’s policy would support the Ash campaign’s scaling-up strategy by eliminating taxes on smoking cessation tools, investing more money in alternatives to smoking, and increasing funding for addiction, according to the party’s accompanying statement. .
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CHRIS MARSHALL / Things
Winston Peters on the campaign trail on Thursday.
But Peters was speechless earlier on his tour of the Taupō electorate when a viewer at a lakefront press conference said he had seen the NZ First frontman smoking on television.
“You won’t be smoking again, will you?” The passerby, a man in his twenties persistently asked him, adding that it was bad for his health.
Ultimately, Peters said it was a question of freedom of choice, but also one that the government was working to reduce, inviting the man to the announcement in Tūrangi.
He did not show up.
In the announcement, Peters said that a competent health strategy would seek to subsidize alternatives to help long-term smokers quit.
CHRIS MARSHALL
Stormy conditions at the lakefront press conference meant the press pack convinced NZ First leader Winston Peters to climb out of a tree under which he had sought shelter.
“The Government’s current Smokefree 2025 approach is not working, with the added contradiction and hypocrisy of holding a referendum on the legalization of recreational marijuana.
“NZ First will reduce the tobacco excise tax so that the average pack of cigarettes does not exceed $ 20, eliminate taxes on smoking cessation tools and end the belief that what we are doing is working,” he said. Peters.
Workers and poor people were being “screwed up,” he said, as $ 2 billion in cigarette taxes was disproportionately taken from those in lower socioeconomic circumstances.
“Only a minuscule amount of the tax is reinvested in smoking cessation initiatives. We want to fund more addiction services and make more alternatives to smoking available.
“We would prefer that people not smoke, but for some kiwis and their families it is a choice between smoking and buying food,” Peters said.
The high tax on tobacco use had fueled a black market for tobacco, with sophisticated criminal operations importing cigarettes from parts of the world where the tobacco tax was low.
“Less sophisticated criminals target dairy farms and gas stations that are too often victims of violent crime.”
Lowering the excise tax would reduce the value of stolen cigarettes for petty criminals, he said.
