Firms back smoking as adult choice

Tobacco companies commenting on the Ministry of Health's five-year plan for tobacco control say smoking is an adult choice and smokers should not be discriminated against.

British American Tobacco New Zealand made submissions to the Ministry of Health in April last year when Clearing the Smoke, a five-year plan for tobacco control in New Zealand, was being drafted.

The plan, released in October, outlines five objectives the Government hopes to undertake to reduce smoking from 25 per cent to 20 per cent of the population by 2009.

Initiatives to combat tobacco intake include taxation, requiring all workplaces to be smokefree, mass media campaigns and minimising the cost of giving up smoking.

The submissions by BAT NZ, released under the Official Information Act, said it acknowledged the health risks and difficulty of quitting smoking, but said smoking was an adult choice and those who chose to smoke should not be discriminated against for making that choice.

"We believe that an informed adult decision to enjoy the pleasures of smoking, while balancing the pleasures against the risks, should not make smokers subject to criticism any more than the many other lifestyle choices that adults all make," it said.

The submissions criticised what the company called a passing of the buck from the Ministry of Health to police in controlling youth smoking, saying the industry provided the Government with $1 billion a year in taxes with only a fraction of that spent on prevention programmes.

The tobacco company said any plans to put pictorial health warnings on cigarette packets were inappropriate. Where it had been introduced in countries such as Canada it had created a "collectors' market" for packets and trade in packet sleeves.

Meanwhile, cigarette company Philip Morris said the plan "should recognise that smoking is - and should remain - an adult choice." It also criticised any changing of cigarette display, saying it was one of the few ways companies had left to communicate their brands to smokers.

Ash chairman Murray Laugesen said smokers were already being discriminated against by the cigarette companies, which were making a product which was giving smokers a much higher death rate.