New Zealand was making really good progress on getting down the smoking rate with a variety of measures (primarily ramping the tax).

The current government has started rolling back decades of progress, and SURPRISE, they have close ties to the tobacco industry including MPs who worked for tobacco companies.

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exidy 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Disclaimer: I'm a non-smoker

As mentioned upthread, Australia has been running a similar strategy of trying to tax smoking out of existence and all that's happened is they've rediscovered the Laffer curve as well as pushing otherwise law-abiding citizens towards illegal tobacco.

There's a limit to how much sin tax people are prepared to put up with. Either its legal to consume or it's not, and vapes are far less objectionable to be near by than traditional cigarettes. It bemuses me that Aus, NZ, Singapore etc have gone down the path of trying to ban vape usage when the alternative is far worse.

"The more you tighten your grip .. " etc.

	▲	lostlogin 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		NZ isn’t trying to ban it, not at all. Winston Peters loves tobacco. This government loves the tobacco industry, to the extent that it has them helping with legislation (industry documents mysteriously getting used to write policy). Casey Costello is a corrupt joke. Having just spent a bit of time travelling, I think vapes are worse to be near than cigarettes or cigars. Walking down busy street in the UK is just so gross. The sickly sweet strawberry, cinnamon etc. I’d prefer tobacco smoke. And at least there was some etiquette around tobacco smoking. You don’t often encounter it inside, in planes, trains, theatres, malls etc. all those were going on this month. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/573271/casey-costello-b... https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/579431/absolutely-ludicr...