Joanne McNeill: Smokers too valuable to kill off

Smokers pay 70 per cent tax, say Joanne McNeill.

In a health-obsessed New Zealand aiming to be smoke free by 2025, smoking cigarettes is certainly not recommended.

The biggest drawback is the price, of which about 70 per cent is tax.

The widely held belief that the exorbitant tax is justified by filthy smokers' health costs is an urban myth. Some 2013 Treasury documents showed that while tobacco tax revenues exceed $1 billion annually, smokers' direct health care costs are estimated at a mere $350 million annually, leaving an expedient, fat surplus - nice work if you can get it - with which staunch smokers are subsidising everyone else.

In addition to smokers' heroic taxpaying duties, their shorter life spans (arguably poverty-induced) reduce their need for superannuation and aged care, which adds up to national economic benefit.

Apparently the tax is actually a strategy designed to encourage smokers to quit, however since every annual 10 per cent increase is estimated to result in only between 3 and 5 per cent of smokers giving up the unequal struggle to pay the tax, it is not as effective as is often claimed.

Economically, it might be a better bet for the Government to cancel further tobacco tax increases and maintain the numbers of smokers in the population at a steady level to keep the revenue flowing in.

When Auckland University law professor Jane Kelsey recently renamed our alleged "rock star economy" "the drug-addict economy", she was referring to its risky dependence on borrowing, but the term could be applied equally to using tobacco addicts as cash cows. In fact, given plummeting dairy payouts, farming diehard smokers could well form the new backbone of the economy.

Were beneficiaries encouraged to chain-smoke for instance, their weekly pittances would waft straight up their noses and back into government coffers pronto, with a minimal net loss to those squeaky clean taxpayers who regularly turn their noses up at smokers and bludgers alike.

The other big disadvantage of smoking, besides the price, is social exile.

Sadly, credulous small children - fed the anti-smoking propaganda line that smoking kills - watch smokers lighting up with real terror. Assumedly, they fully expect these hapless puffers to drop dead before their very eyes.

Mostly, smokers have been segregated out of sight.

If the correlation between passive smoking in confined spaces and smoking-related diseases could be proven causative rather than merely conveniently statistical this would make sense. However it cannot, and furthermore, smoking is banned now even in many open empty spaces where there are no innocent bystanders to harm, so the expulsion is clearly more punitive than practical.

There is a saving grace though. Smokers enjoy the best of both worlds.

While smug, blinkered non-smokers huddle safely in insulated confinement, smokers see both sides, indoors and out - moons, skies, wildlife, neighbourhood activities - giving them a far more informed perspective, not to mention extra fresh air and, in winter when it's too cold to stand still, superior opportunities for good healthy exercise.

The best part is the instant camaraderie with fellow refugees from uptight society. Even if they're total strangers, embattled smokers share the bond of rejection. It makes introductions unnecessary so you really can meet the nicest people out smoking.