KEY POINTS:
Cigarettes could cost $25 a packet or more within a decade under a tobacco tax plan to be proposed today by health experts.
The plan, which would see steady increases of tobacco taxes until prices had doubled, will be unveiled at a Medical Association seminar on tobacco taxation, being held in Auckland today.
The strategy was developed by researchers at Wellington School of Medicine and Massey University. It was carried out independently of those institutions, and commissioned by the Smokefree Coalition and ASH.
A key to the dramatic tax hikes being accepted by the public would be the revenue being earmarked for smoking cessation programmes and anti-smoking initiatives, Dr George Thompson, a senior public health research fellow, said.
"The community desperately needs to do something about tobacco use, and the most proven effective thing is price. To increase price you have to raise taxes, which is seen as being very politically unpopular.
"You can make it much much more popular, you can get over 80 per cent support in a number of places where higher taxes have occurred, if you use that revenue for solving the problem."
Surveys carried out in several American states had shown support for higher tobacco taxes increased if it was clearly stated the revenue would be tagged to anti-smoking initiatives, Dr Thompson said.
"Up until now planning has basically been ad hoc for one tax rise at a time, so we're saying if the Government is serious about using this as a health intervention, then they need to look at a series of rises and setting a target, and to fit it in with tobacco control overall."
Higher taxes should encourage more smokers to quit, with previous sizeable drops in New Zealand smoking rates coinciding with tax hikes, Dr Thompson said.
At $25 a packet, groups with high smoking rates and low incomes - especially young people and Maori and Pacific Islanders - would also see smoking rates drop, Dr Thompson predicted.
"Even Treasury will accept the argument for helping prevent youth taking up smoking ... "
This year's Budget committed $43.6 million dollars in additional funding over four years for smoking cessation programmes.
Health Minister Pete Hodgson would not commit himself to hiking tobacco taxes, but said the Government was taking action to tackle smoking.
"Tobacco control is a high priority for this Labour-led government. It is the largest single cause of preventable death in New Zealand," Mr Hodgson said.
"Tobacco is one of nine health sector target areas agreed by the Ministry of Health and District Health Boards as priorities to be actively addressed and monitored both for Maori and non-Maori."
Tobacco taxes
* Tobacco taxes earn the Government about $1 billion a year, or just under 2 per cent of total tax revenue.
* New Zealanders spend around $1.6 billion a year on tobacco. About 750,000 people smoke.
* Apart from an annual CPI adjustment, there has been no real hike in tobacco taxes in the past seven years.
* An estimated 14 deaths a day are caused by tobacco use.
