Tariana Turia's Legacy

Smoke Free New Zealand by 2025

We have written numerous times about the idiocy of the NZ government declaring that New Zealand will be ciggie free by 2025.  The mechanism to bring this about is steep increases in the price of the deadly evil every year until they will become more expensive than a pot of gold. 

The Force behind this utopian dream was the Maori Party, and in particular its uber-mothering leader, Tariana Turia.  Columnist Barry Soper writes:

The Māori Party will have done a lot of reflection as to why it's no longer in politics. The answer's pretty obvious, they didn't represent the wishes of their people even though they felt they had their best interests at heart.

Their former co leader Tariana Turia, a fierce advocate for all things Maori, wanted better health for her people and one of the best ways to do that she believed was to stop them from smoking, setting silly target of a smoke free New Zealand by 2025.  As the target became more elusive, Turia wanted to ban tobacco products, to make them illegal. When that failed they began pricing them off the market.

Government Wowsering

Up in Smoke

In New Zealand we have a messianic crusade to make the country "smoke free" by 2025.  The definition of this paradisaical state is as follows:

 What does Smokefree New Zealand 2025 mean?

• Our children and grandchildren will be free from exposure to tobacco and tobacco use
  

• The smoking prevalence across all populations will be <5%. The goal is not a ban on smoking.
  

• Tobacco will be difficult to sell and supply.  [http://smokefree.org.nz/smokefree-2025]

Of course this is being promulgated by government and its agencies, and driven by particular wowser-politicians.  We do not question the motives of said protagonists.  Smoking can cause much harm.  But we do question the wisdom of the wowsers. 

Moreover, we are also deeply sceptical of government promoted programmes and causes where the underlying object is to restrain government spending on health (as is the case of the anti-tobacco movement).  The reason is straightforward: when an entire population (that is, more than 5 percent) is dependant upon government provided healthcare, the government has been given a license to control human behaviour to an extraordinary extent for its own ends.  In this case, the broader campaign against smoking shows every sign of not being driven primarily by concern over smokers welfare, but by a desire to restrain public health expenditure.

The Fiscal Benefits of Tobacco

Asinine Zealotry

The zealots amongst us are trying to make New Zealand smoke free by 2025.  Why?  Well, it's good for us.  The state knows best.  The gummint is on a moral crusade--being spearheaded by our current nanny-in-chief, Tariana Turia.  She and her Maori parliamentary cohort are all wound up because they believe smoking is a Maori health issue: tobacco addiction rates are much higher amongst Maori than non-Maori.

Rather than do the hard yards of actually reforming Maori society they have opted to take the "easy" road.  Ban tobacco for everyone in the country.  Hell hath no greater fury than a zealous politician trying to engineer redemption by legislating to make us good. 

We confidently predict that as a consequence tobacco growing will rapidly expand in the benign New Zealand climate.