Cigarette price rise lifts the ash cloud
1st May 2010

As the ash cloud cleared over Europe this week it looks like another ash cloud may be lifting in this part of the world with the government deciding on a hefty rise in the price of cigarettes. If politics mirrors society the almost unanimous agreement in parliament showed how marginalised smoking has become.

Many of us already live in a virtually cigarette-less world. My home is smoke-free, my workplace is smoke-free, the public spaces I move in are smoke-free. My friends and acquaintances are almost all smoke-free. My life has got to the point that when I occasionally get close to a smoker I am acutely aware of the ash tray odour. My rare encounters with smokers are glimpses of strange, refugee-like creatures huddled in the doorways of office blocks, sucking greedy and guilty on their ‘smoko’ fags.

How times have changed. I grew up in a fog of cigarette smoke. My dad was a packet-a-day man who only quit when the habit killed him at 55. In those days smoking was generally regarded as being good for one’s health and almost everybody did it. Our houses, clothes, hair and breath all reeked of cigarette smoke – first or second hand. Halls, pubs and offices were littered with ash trays.

Although we have pushed the cloud to the margins many New Zealanders continue to live in a fog of tobacco. There are groups that seem beyond the reach of education programmes and peer pressure to quit – especially young Maori women, for some reason.

The government’s decision to use price as a mechanism for change is a genuine no-brainer, given that most smokers acquire the habit during those crucial few years of adolescence when we park our brains and operate on hormonal overdrive. With cigarettes now costing nearly a dollar a fag it is going to take just a little more determination for a 13 or 14 year old to start smoking.

Can we foresee the day when New Zealand becomes totally smoke-free? Imagine a world where the few remaining smokers are gathered into zoos for people to ogle and point at; where airlines offer weekend package trips to countries where smoking remains acceptable.

Australia will not be on their itinerary because our cousins hiked their own cigarette prices the day after us, and trumped us by enforcing a 25% price rise compared to our modest 10%. There’s more: Australia will also require cigarettes to be sold in plain packaging with brand names displayed in identical font sizes and types. The reasoning here is that branding is part of the attraction for young smokers. The only decoration allowed on cigarette packets will be the usual horror pictures of gelatinous eye-balls and festering teeth.

Following Australia’s lead there is scope for much more creativity in reducing the attractiveness of smoking. How about placing a small model of a diseased heart or eyeball on a spring under the lid of every cigarette packet? Or fitting all cigarettes with a tiny microchip that plays recorded warning messages when lit? It would take a hardened smoker to puff on a cigarette that’s berating him with comments like “I’m gonna kill ya, buddy,” or simply, “what the f*** do you think you’re doing?”

People who take up smoking never look before they leap but the government’s message is that they can anticipate the price of smokes continuing to rise. May the rise be steep and the grip of cigarettes around our throats become history.

And when we’ve seen off the ash cloud we can get to grips with that other unnatural disaster – the tide of alcohol that washes through our communities like the floodwaters lapping Queenstown’s main street. But that’s another story.