Former associate health minister Dame Tariana Turia is disappointed she was not able to get the government to remove tobacco from sale in New Zealand.
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It’s World Smokefree Day, and the Cancer Society and Maori public health organisation Hapai Te Hauora have launched the Dame Tariana Turia Award for tobacco control, which will go to someone working in tobacco control who has made an impact on indigenous smoking levels.
Dame Tariana says she is proud of what she was able to do as minister with the support of many others, but the New Zealand government still needs to say tobacco is a poisonous substance that should not be part of trade.
It showed it was able to act by stopping the sale of party pills and synthetic cannabis.
“They took the other off the shelves because of the incidents that were occurring through people taking them, yet for some reason tobacco has never been considered to be an unsafe substance,” she says.
Dame Tariana says dairy owners who want government protection against cigarette robberies should instead consider not selling them, following the lead of a Maori-owned dairy in Whanganui.
Meanwhile, the New Zealand Defence Force is taking steps to be the world’s first smokefree military by 2020, including banning the sale of cigarettes on camps and bases and making NZDF housing smokefree.