Speaker 1: Kilda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Remember when
Speaker 2: we were meant to be smoke free by twenty twenty five?
Speaker 3: New Zealand's goal.
Speaker 2: To have fewer than five percent of people smoking by
Speaker 2: the end of the year looks unlikely to be met.
Speaker 3: The target was introduced in twenty ten, and while.
Speaker 2: Smoking has dropped significantly since then, from sixteen point four
Speaker 2: percent and twenty eleven, for example, to six point nine
Speaker 2: percent in twenty twenty three twenty four, there are still
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of people in Altaioa smoking every day.
Speaker 2: In December twenty twenty two, New Zealand enacted world leading
Speaker 2: tobacco control legislation, essentially creating a whole generation who'll never
Speaker 2: be able to buy a pack of cigis.
Speaker 3: But with that up in smoke, what's next?
Speaker 1: Today?
Speaker 2: On the front Page, hard by teh Or, Chief Operating
Speaker 2: Officer Jackson Alexander is with us to discuss how we
Speaker 2: might be able to reach our goal of being smoke free. So, Jason,
Speaker 2: what do our smoking statistics look like at the moment?
Speaker 1: So it is twenty twenty five, obviously a big year
Speaker 1: for us. We've been aiming for five percent smoking rates
Speaker 1: across all of our populations, but we're not quite there.
Speaker 1: We won't know the official end of year data until
Speaker 1: next year. But the last rates we had was sitting
Speaker 1: just shy of seven percent for all populations, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: our Mary and Pacific rates are much higher than that.
Speaker 3: What are the rates for Mali and PACIFICA.
Speaker 1: So last measure we had fourteen point seven percent for Mardi,
Speaker 1: that's the highest, and our Pacific final are not far
Speaker 1: behind us, sitting on just over twelve percent twelve point
Speaker 1: three percent.
Speaker 3: What do you think the reasoning is behind that?
Speaker 1: There's a whole lot of reasons. We started off higher
Speaker 1: to start, so, before we embarked on this journey of
Speaker 1: trying to drive towards this twenty twenty five goal, that
Speaker 1: Mary and Pacific rates were much higher. They were slower
Speaker 1: to move in the beginning, although they have accelerated over
Speaker 1: the last few years. But yeah, there's a whole lot
Speaker 1: of historical reasons why Mary and Pacific rates have traditionally
Speaker 1: been higher than the rest of the population.
Speaker 3: Are we continuing to trend downwards or do you think
Speaker 3: the statistics have really stagnated in recent years.
Speaker 1: So the MARTI rates actually have been dropping quite a
Speaker 1: bit over the last sort of five ten years, I guess,
Speaker 1: but the general pop rates have there was little, well
Speaker 1: basically no change. I think it might have gone up
Speaker 1: a point one of a percent between the last two years.
Speaker 1: So it is tricky to know until we get this
Speaker 1: year's data, which will which will drop next year.
Speaker 2: Recent figures I saw a show about three hundred thousand
Speaker 2: daily smokers remain. What do you see is the biggest
Speaker 2: challenges of getting those numbers down, especially by the end
Speaker 2: of the year.
Speaker 1: Look, it's yeah, by the end of the year is
Speaker 1: really tricky. So that's a lot of people that have
Speaker 1: to quit. Just for Mary alone, I think it's about
Speaker 1: sixty two thousand that we need to see quit smoking
Speaker 1: over the course of this year. Just to put that in perspective,
Speaker 1: we're getting about ten to eleven thousand quit each year
Speaker 1: based on recent trends, so it's huge. It's based off
Speaker 1: that it's pretty obvious that we're not going to get there,
Speaker 1: definitely not for all populations. We are still hopeful that
Speaker 1: we'll get there for the general population, but definitely not
Speaker 1: for Mariya and Pacific only something drastic changes over the
Speaker 1: next couple of months, or something's happened that we're not
Speaker 1: aware of over the past year, And.
Speaker 2: What are some of the biggest challenges there for those
Speaker 2: last remaining three hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: I suppose yeah. I mean, it's an addictive product, so
Speaker 1: I don't think we should skirt around that. Neicatines are
Speaker 1: highly addictive. It's tricky to get off. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have tried, a lot of people sort of try
Speaker 1: and come back, to come back and try again. But
Speaker 1: it really does get us hooks into you, I guess,
Speaker 1: and it really is a tricky one to quite I
Speaker 1: feel it was easy. Then the numbers wouldn't be this high,
Speaker 1: tobacco industry wouldn't be this large, and we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: five thousand New Zealanders dying from tobacco related illness every year.
Speaker 3: Do you reckon?
Speaker 2: I know that because excise tax has gone up over
Speaker 2: the years, right, and it's now really really expensive to
Speaker 2: buy a pack of smokes at the dairy. I used
Speaker 2: to actually be a smoke in my early twenties, and
Speaker 2: I remember when the packets went up from I think
Speaker 2: it was like twenty bucks to twenty five bucks. And
Speaker 2: that's you know, in my early twenties wasn't earning a
Speaker 2: whole much bunch of money. So that's when I kind
Speaker 2: of tape it off and thought, right, I need to
Speaker 2: change what I'm doing because I just don't have the money.
Speaker 2: So those people who still smoking today are spending about
Speaker 2: fifty bucks a packet, say, that's obviously not stopping them.
Speaker 2: The price isn't stopping them. Hey, so do you reckon
Speaker 2: we've kind of reached the ceiling I suppose in excise taxes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cigarets are very expensive. What we do have to do, though,
Speaker 1: is make sure that we are increasing them in line
Speaker 1: with everything else. Otherwise, relatively they become cheaper. So we
Speaker 1: don't want them to become cheaper in relation to other
Speaker 1: products because that could sort of drive demand the other way.
Speaker 1: But certainly, I know in the early days we did
Speaker 1: get some good gains through the rising of the prices
Speaker 1: of cigarettes to drive a lot of people to try
Speaker 1: and quit. But once again, it's such an addictive product
Speaker 1: that it's not that easy. So, yes, that is costing
Speaker 1: smokers a lot of money. They obviously would much rather
Speaker 1: have the money in their back pocket. But because it's
Speaker 1: such an addictive product, it's not that simple.
Speaker 2: And there's also the situation of illicit tobacco coming through
Speaker 2: that we've got to worry about now as well.
Speaker 1: Ay, and it's hard to get engaged on exactly how
Speaker 1: big that is. We've got one of the best customs
Speaker 1: in the world here in New Zealand. Our borders are
Speaker 1: pretty tight. So yeah, whenever you increase the price of
Speaker 1: something and something, especially when it's addictive like this, then
Speaker 1: you are going to see people try to bring it
Speaker 1: through other means, to try and dose those excise taxes
Speaker 1: and try and get them to people who require them
Speaker 1: because they're are so addicted through other means.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: So we can probably agree that the smoke free twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five goal is not going to be hit right.
Speaker 2: It's twenty twenty five now, obviously, But when they envisioned
Speaker 2: it in twenty ten, do you think it was overly
Speaker 2: ambitious then, or if we made the right steps, could
Speaker 2: we have actually achieved it by the end of this year.
Speaker 1: It was ambitious, without a doubt, but it was ambitious
Speaker 1: because it needed to be. It is the biggest killer
Speaker 1: here in New Zealand. It's not something that you can
Speaker 1: sort of lightfoot around and just hope it gets better.
Speaker 1: You have to sort of go after it aggressively. And
Speaker 1: it was so embedded within within our society, I guess
Speaker 1: that we needed these big steps to try and get
Speaker 1: rid of it and start reducing some of the harm
Speaker 1: that our communities have experienced over the years from it. So, yes,
Speaker 1: it was it was super optimistic, but there were some
Speaker 1: steps in there that could have got us there.
Speaker 3: And what are some of those steps?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, probably the probably the big three are
Speaker 1: the ones that were in the Curcal legislation that were proposed.
Speaker 1: They were a little bit late to the table, but
Speaker 1: they were three sort of I guess, just logical things
Speaker 1: that would have made a huge difference. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: making cigarettes less addictive. That obviously is going to make
Speaker 1: if people try cigarettes and they're less likely to get
Speaker 1: addicted to them, and if they want to try and
Speaker 1: get rid of them, then it's going to make it
Speaker 1: a bit easier for them to move on from cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Can reducing the number of outlets. You can get cigarettes
Speaker 1: everywhere here, Every single area has got them. Some streets
Speaker 1: have got three dairies and all of them will have
Speaker 1: cigarettes like that's totally unnecessary. If we look at the
Speaker 1: saturation of tobacco outlets, particular and ow in some of
Speaker 1: our poorer, our underserved communities, then there's even more there
Speaker 1: than there are now more affluent suburbs, and the smoking
Speaker 1: rates in those suburbs, which are mostly Malori and Pacific
Speaker 1: suburbs by the way, are reflective of those So reducing
Speaker 1: those numbers right down just to make them less available
Speaker 1: and less prevalent in our communities would have made a
Speaker 1: huge difference. And the third would have was the smoke
Speaker 1: free generation measure, which would have stopped anyone born I
Speaker 1: think it was jan one, two thousand and nine. They
Speaker 1: never would have been able to buy cigarettes so progressively
Speaker 1: increasing their age, and that would have made a huge difference.
Speaker 1: It would have obviously cut off the flow of new
Speaker 1: smokers coming in, so then we can just focus on
Speaker 1: looking after those that currently smoked. And I would have
Speaker 1: made particularly a huge difference for Mardi communities, which we
Speaker 1: know Mali population is a lot younger than the general population,
Speaker 1: so it would have it would have been a game change.
Speaker 1: Of those three well, it.
Speaker 2: Made international headlines when it was first announced. We were
Speaker 2: seen as being world leading, but then it was scrapped
Speaker 2: obviously last year.
Speaker 3: Do you reckon that was a huge mistake?
Speaker 1: Look, I think it was. There was some some people
Speaker 1: flagged the difficulties around sort of putting some of these
Speaker 1: things through, and I just think it would have been
Speaker 1: with it once again, like it was, they were aspirational,
Speaker 1: there were world leading policies. There wasn't evidence a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence for them because we were literally the first
Speaker 1: in the world, so we were trying something different, but
Speaker 1: we were doing it for a good reason, because we
Speaker 1: were trying to get rid of this incitious product from
Speaker 1: from Altiora. So yeah, I honestly do think it was
Speaker 1: a big mistake to get rid of those and I
Speaker 1: think we should still look at those or some very
Speaker 1: on those three areas that we need to do if
Speaker 1: we're going to shift this.
Speaker 4: The idea that more young New Zealanders should take up
Speaker 4: smoking in order to pay for tax cuts is morally reprehensible.
Speaker 4: I don't think New Zealanders thought that's what they were
Speaker 4: going to get. I don't think that's the change they
Speaker 4: were voting for when they voted at the last election.
Speaker 4: Mister Speaker, National's decision to wind back the smoke free
Speaker 4: alter or agenda as a disgrace to New Zealand as
Speaker 4: a country. It is an international embarrassment and it is
Speaker 4: making headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 3: How do you feel about vaping?
Speaker 1: Yeah, vaping is a tricky one. Obviously, Dylan Ever wanted
Speaker 1: it to have sort of the grip on some of
Speaker 1: our kids that it does now. It was never intended
Speaker 1: to be for children. It was never intended to be
Speaker 1: for non smokers to use. It was always intended to
Speaker 1: be an option to help people shift from tobacco, and
Speaker 1: in the beginning, well even even still now, it has
Speaker 1: worked for a lot of our long term smokers that
Speaker 1: have tried other methods and it and just haven't been
Speaker 1: able to break away. So I think it does have
Speaker 1: a place, But we didn't roll it out how we
Speaker 1: should have. We weren't careful, we didn't look after. I
Speaker 1: don't say that it was too accessible. Even now you
Speaker 1: can see how many of these vape stores are around.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous and once again saturated in those same neighborhoods
Speaker 1: that I was speaking about earlier with the tobacco outlets.
Speaker 1: It just seems to be everywhere. And if you speak
Speaker 1: to any sort of intermediate high school principal, if you
Speaker 1: ask them what the top issue affecting them is, it's faithing.
Speaker 1: That's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it's seen as I suppose, trendy to
Speaker 2: young people. Obviously they've never tried a cigarette in their lives,
Speaker 2: but then they pick up a vape. Do you ever
Speaker 2: wonder because when I was thinking about this and when
Speaker 2: I was younger, smoking was quote unquote cool, right, And
Speaker 2: that's probably why I started when I was so young.
Speaker 3: In terms of trends are cyclical.
Speaker 2: Do you ever think that smoking there's a chance of
Speaker 2: smoking to become cool again once all the vaping has
Speaker 2: worn off?
Speaker 3: And is that a real worry?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think it's always a worry. We don't know
Speaker 1: how trends are going to go. I mean, but even
Speaker 1: when it comes to tobacco, like making it a truly
Speaker 1: it didn't just happen. It was very purposeful, was very
Speaker 1: intentional by the tobacco industry. They were putting cigarettes into
Speaker 1: music videos, onto MTV like all these different places, and
Speaker 1: like it wasn't it doesn't. It didn't just happen. So
Speaker 1: that's why we need to make sure that we're very
Speaker 1: purposeful with any measures that you put in place, because
Speaker 1: stuff doesn't just happen, but we do have to make
Speaker 1: sure that those protections are there.
Speaker 2: In terms of vaping, I know that the advertising is
Speaker 2: watered down quite a bit now, but is there anything
Speaker 2: further that we can do to try and stop youth
Speaker 2: from picking up a vape or maybe banning specific flavors altogether,
Speaker 2: or something like that, making them all black and boring
Speaker 2: and you know, tobacco flavored or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a lot of measures that we
Speaker 1: could still employ, and a lot of them are similar
Speaker 1: to the approach that we took with tobacco. So we
Speaker 1: can make the packets least appealing, we can make the flavors, well,
Speaker 1: that's not a tobacco on, but we can make the
Speaker 1: flavors less appealing to children, even the name all those
Speaker 1: sorts of things. Once again, the amount of outlets there are,
Speaker 1: it's crazy, silly little things, like it's almost like that's
Speaker 1: circum meanting the rules, but they're not. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like the store within a store at a dairy where
Speaker 1: they sort of have two doors, but it's the same
Speaker 1: store or the same person and there's like a piece
Speaker 1: of timber up there that separates the two, and then
Speaker 1: they're allowed to be a vape store. Like that just
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense to me, and I don't think
Speaker 1: it's in the spirit of the law. So we need
Speaker 1: to sort of tidy up all those little things. The
Speaker 1: placement of ape stores. We've got them still close to schools,
Speaker 1: Like we brought in some rules around the placement of them,
Speaker 1: but it didn't apply to any of the ones which
Speaker 1: are already close to schools, And there was even a
Speaker 1: delay from the announcement until then it was rolled out,
Speaker 1: and a whole lot more of vape stores popped up
Speaker 1: within those zones that we know we don't want vape
Speaker 1: stores in the meantime, So there's lots of lots of
Speaker 1: things we could and we should be doing to make
Speaker 1: sure that we don't end up with another problem. Well,
Speaker 1: I think the problems already here, to be honest, but
Speaker 1: we need to trying to actively work against those things.
Speaker 3: So, Jason, where do we go to from now?
Speaker 2: Do we kind of need to smoke free twenty thirty
Speaker 2: five or something.
Speaker 1: That's a very good question, I guess. For so long
Speaker 1: we've always been focused on the Smoke Free twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five gold, but it's not it's not a thing that
Speaker 1: we miss and then we stop. I think we sort
Speaker 1: of we really do need to double down on our
Speaker 1: efforts now because people are still dying from this product.
Speaker 1: We need to get it out of out of New Zealand.
Speaker 1: It's sort of sort of serves no purpose. It's almost
Speaker 1: like a wasp if you're like, it's sort of it's
Speaker 1: there's no redeeming qualities to it. I think the only
Speaker 1: thing you ever hear is someone saying that it helps
Speaker 1: me relax, but that's usually from smokers, and it's because
Speaker 1: they're addicted. So it's sort of curbing that that nagging
Speaker 1: sound in the back of the head that telling them
Speaker 1: that they need nicotine.
Speaker 3: Were you ever a smoker?
Speaker 1: No, I couldn't afford it when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: to be honest, probably wasn't cool enough either. Tried it
Speaker 1: a couple of times, tasted like rubbish, so I never
Speaker 1: sort of pursued it.
Speaker 2: It does, man, it's awful, and after I think because
Speaker 2: I stopped smoking because I picked up the vapes, so
Speaker 2: I am actually a converted smoker. And you know, and
Speaker 2: then you tape it down from over time. But I
Speaker 2: remember thinking, once you're over that that push, you go out.
Speaker 3: And you're like, oh my god, did I smell like
Speaker 3: that all the time.
Speaker 2: I remember like dowsing myself with perfume after going for
Speaker 2: a smoko and you think.
Speaker 3: Wow, like you are.
Speaker 2: Really it's an addiction, and when once you're in that
Speaker 2: bubble and you can only see it when you're out
Speaker 2: of it exactly.
Speaker 3: Oh, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: No problem, Thank you for your time today.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at NZHERLD, dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who's also our editor.
Speaker 3: I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts and chew you in it tomorrow for
Speaker 2: another look behind the headlines.