Point of Order: Little announces booster shot for Maori health....

........while welcoming figures that show the benefits of a targeted approach

Point of Order’s Beehive monitors were treated to a double dose of Health Minister Andrew Little’s rejoicing today.

Little and Associate Health Minister Peeni Henare announced what they called a record funding boost for Māori primary and community healthcare providers as part of $71.6 million in commissioning investments by the Māori Health Authority.

Some would call this discriminatory spending. Little prefers to call it targeted.

The bullet points in the press statement show:

Eric Crampton: 'Prohibition' approach to smoking unlikely to succeed

Budget 2022 allocated just over $2.5 million a year, over four years, to the Customs Service to help it stop cigarette smuggling.

I wonder whether it will be enough. Prohibition is expensive to enforce, and legislation working its way through Parliament is going to be getting us awfully close to prohibition.

It is a bit of a shame. There are far better ways of encouraging harm-reduction if that were still the goal of tobacco policy.

Lindsay Perigo: 2, 4, 6, 8 - Incinerate the Nanny State!

"How far can you oppress somebody?"

That's the fork-tongued question posed by an academic who used to support the punitive taxes imposed by the New Zealand government on tobacco, but is now wracked with qualms in the wake of the latest hike that will raise the cost of cigarettes to over $20 a packet.

Matt Ridley from the UK: E-cigarettes deserve encouragement as a lesser evil

Sweden’s reputation for solving policy problems, from education to banking, is all the rage. The Swedes are also ahead of the rest of Europe in tackling smoking. They have by far the fewest smokers per head of population of all EU countries. Lung cancer mortality in Swedish men over 35 is less than half the British rate.

Have they done it by being more zealous in ostracising, educating and shaming smokers in that paternalistic Scandinavian way? No — they did it through innovation and competition. In the 1980s Swedes developed a tobacco product called snus, which you put under your upper lip. You get the nicotine but not the tar. Snus is the most popular and effective way of quitting smoking in Sweden (and Norway).

Richard Prebble: Politically Incorrect thinking

Our government has adopted the lofty goal of making New Zealand smoke free by 2025.  There has been some discussion on whether tobacco prohibition is practical but none on what will be the unintended consequences.  A packet of twenty cigarettes now cost $17 and the price is set to rise by 10 percent a year. The assumption is that the price will cause all smokers to quit.  While the number of smokers has been falling for forty years our experience with hard drugs shows that price is no barrier for an addict. 

The reported rise in amount of duty free cigarettes entering the country indicates that the price has caused an increase in private “importing”.  Down my road a farmer is, legally selling tobacco plants. Soon criminals will organize the private importing and growing.  We are creating the conditions to grow organized crime.