Both sides are NOT the same
A Labour government brought in world-leading anti-smoking legislation. The National-led coalition killed that legislation and gave multi-million dollar tax breaks to a tobacco company. Smoking kills about five thousand New Zealanders a year.
Both sides are not the same.
I’ve seen a fair amount of discussion here in which it is said that ‘both sides are the same’, the sides in question being the left and right of the political aisle. I don’t believe that’s the case, and so it’s time for an instalment of what might become an ongoing segment: “Both sides are not the same.”
Tonight, we’re looking at tobacco. Which is certainly better than smelling it, though looking at the damage it does to your lungs is also pretty gross. But I digress.
In 2022, the Labour-led government passed a law to create a steadily increasing smoking age, that would “stop those aged 14 and under from ever being able to legally buy cigarettes”[1]. Other measures in the bill included reducing the legal amount of tobacco in tobacco products, and only permitting tobacco to be sold in specialty tobacco stores. They also increased funding for services that helped nicotine addicts. The Associate Health Minister at the time said “Thousands of people will live longer, healthier lives and the health system will be five billion dollars better off from not needing to treat the illnesses caused by smoking, such as numerous types of cancer, heart attacks, strokes, amputations.”
In November 2023, after National took power, Nicola Willis said the measures would be cancelled before March 2024 [2], so that the cigarette revenue could be used for tax cuts, and they were repealed in February 2024. Willis blamed ACT and New Zealand First, saying they were “insistent” on reversing the tobacco restrictions. Public health experts estimated this change would cost 5,000 lives a year, and impact Maori disproportionately, due to higher smoking rates. Other modelling showed the smoking cessation policy would have provided estimated income gains for the government of 1.42 billion dollars by 2040 thanks to revenue provided by people living longer and not developing chronic disease. [3]
Later in 2024, the Associate Health Minister, Casey Costello, slashed the excise tax on heated tobacco products by 50% [4]. Tobacco multinational Philip Morris had been lobbying for a cut to the excise tax since 2018. In theory this cut was to be a one-year trial, followed by an evaluation. However, in July 2025, it was announced that the evaluation would now be done in July 2027, and the reduced tax rate would apply until then. The Health Ministry had advised her that there was no evidence to show heated tobacco products were safe, nor to support their use as a smoking cessation tool [5]. Costello said (with shaky evidence) that heated tobacco products had a similar risk profile to vaping, but Treasury and Health officials advised her that they were much more harmful.
To reiterate: A Labour government brought in world-leading anti-smoking legislation. The National-led coalition killed that legislation and gave multi-million dollar tax breaks to a tobacco company. Smoking kills about five thousand New Zealanders a year.
Both sides are not the same.
(Citations in the comments)