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New Zealand scraps world-first smoking ‘generation ban’ to fund tax cuts (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Health experts say axing plan to block sales of tobacco products to next generation will cost thousands of lives

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[–] [email protected] 75 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Makes you wonder how much lobbying Big Tobacco did.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They just had an election and the government flipped from centre-left to centre-right. It could just be the classic conservative “our position is whatever is the opposite of the left!”

[–] [email protected] 42 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Winston Peters (NZ First leader) is a total alcohol, tobacco, and racing (horse, greyhound, whatever) industry shill. I doubt he exactly needed to be bought, but this is certainly part of his price for being part of the coalition government.

ACT (secular libertarian free market folk) probably mildly supported it, and National (general centre right; largest party) is probably much the same.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

No I blame Seymour for this. Luxon went for it because Winston cock blocked him on foriegn ownership and he needs to fund those tax cuts.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Big tobacco doesn't really need cigarette sales anymore. They are all in on vape brands, where they can sell the liquid at ink-jet prices to customers for a huge markup at $6500 per liter. That's why you see vape shops on each street corner. The distribution is all streamlined. The website talks to the DHL warehouse about what stock is available, customers can subscribe to weekly delivery plans and the warehouse is filled by some factory in china.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I believe the ban affected vape products as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Just out of curiousity have you ever seen liquid sold at $65/10ml? I usually pay 50-100x less than that

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Hard to say because they are very sneaky. We do know that Big tobacco ran a fake grassroots campaign with an imaginary dairy owner front man. ("Dairy" is the New Zealand name for corner shops/ drugstores)

Tagging you @AnAngryAlpaca - they may not need it but their greed didn't get the memo.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Their campaign strategist was an "ex" tobacco lobbyist