Harawira: Time to be smokefree

Smokefree 2025 won’t happen unless the Government sets clear targets and spends the money to achieve those targets, according to former Te Tai Tokerau MP Hone Harawira, who led the stop smoking campaign in Parliament that gave rise to the 2025 target.

The Smokefree 2025 campaign aims to have less than 5 per cent of the population smoking tobacco by 2025. “The minister is hailing the current campaign as ‘bold’, but belated and behind schedule is probably a more apt description,” he said.

“We should have seen the funding allocation to control and eliminate tobacco in Aotearoa go from 2 per cent to 50 per cent over the last 10 years. Unfortunately, it’s only gone from 2 per cent to 3 per cent, while the Government rakes in nearly $2 billion in tobacco taxes every year, and spends it mostly on everything else but tobacco control.

“We should have put Māori at the helm a long time ago and given them licence to design campaigns that worked for the most vulnerable populations. We should have started an annual increase in the spend on cessation, rehabilitation, media campaigns and innovation years ago. We should have started a campaign to reduce nicotine, reducing cigarette flavouring and filters 10 years ago.

“We should have started a campaign to reduce points of sale every year until we were down to a shortlist of regulated outlets. There were some “wonderful pronouncements” in the Government’s latest proposals, “but the truth is that the consultation was done years ago. The time now is for action to back the plan up with deadlines and penalties.”