New Zealand scraps world-first smoking ‘generation ban’ to fund tax cuts (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 10 months ago by Marsupial@quokk.au to c/world@lemmy.world

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Health experts say axing plan to block sales of tobacco products to next generation will cost thousands of lives

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[-] BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world 39 points 10 months ago

Tobacco tax revenue is the best example of accepting a price on lives lost

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 4 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

New Zealand’s new government will scrap the country’s world-leading law to ban smoking for future generations to help pay for tax cuts – a move that public health officials believe will cost thousands of lives and be “catastrophic” for Māori communities.

National has had to find new ways to fund its tax plan, after its coalition partner, New Zealand First, rejected a proposal to let foreign buyers back into the property market.

“Coming back to those extra sources of revenue and other savings areas that will help us to fund the tax reduction, we have to remember that the changes to the smoke-free legislation had a significant impact on the Government books – with about $1bn there.”

But public health experts have expressed shock at the policy reversal, saying it could cost up to 5,000 lives a year, and be particularly detrimental to Māori, who have higher smoking rates.

Te Morenga highlighted recent modelling that showed the regulations would save $1.3bn in health system costs over the next 20 years, if fully implemented, and would reduce mortality rates by 22% for women, and 9% for men.

“This move suggests a disregard for the voices of the communities most affected by tobacco harm – favouring economic interests,” said chief executive Jason Alexander.

The original article contains 601 words, the summary contains 211 words. Saved 65%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] Lophostemon@aussie.zone -3 points 10 months ago

Smoking and vaping is a fantastic ‘red flag’ to warn of the otherwise potentially unobserved fuckwititis that many people suffer from.

[+] vrek@programming.dev -15 points 10 months ago

I hate when articles say "will cost X number of lives". No it won't. It will cut them short, it will costs years off people's lives. Unless it's sterilized people it won't cost lives.

A person may die at 40 instead of 80 but that is still a life.

[-] Kacarott@feddit.de 8 points 10 months ago

You could say this about anything though. A serial killer isn't taking lives, merely shortening them. Suicide isn't ending a life it's just shortening one. Literally all death can be seen as merely the shortening of an otherwise longer life, which makes your distinction pointless.

[-] vrek@programming.dev -2 points 10 months ago

Yes it's less extreme language. It's doesn't manipulate emotions as much, that's the point.

[-] Kacarott@feddit.de 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

How is the language extreme? For something to "cost lives" means exactly for those lives to be cut short, there is no other meaningful definition. The language used is exactly as extreme as the scenario it describes, by definition.

Do you apply your same logic to other scenarios too? Like would rather that "the tsunami cost the lives of 55 people" be reworded as "the tsunami shortened the lives of 55 people"?

[-] vrek@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

If something is $20 and I buy it with $100 bill, doesn't mean it cost me $100.

Now something like the zika virus which sterilized men several years ago dud cost lives. Lives that may of been made but can no longer.

That is the difference. Each death from smoking or a tsunami or a mass murderer costed years of potential life but didnt cost the whole life.

[-] Kacarott@feddit.de 1 points 10 months ago

That is not what costing something means. Cost is to lose something which you have, it does not mean to lose the potential to something you don't have. If an apple costs a dollar, it means you had that dollar, and now you don't. The impact of the apple was for the number of dollars you have to decrease by one. If you buy it with 100 dollars it obviously doesn't cost 100 dollars because you get 99 dollars back.

When talking about lives, we don't get them back. People have lives, and if something causes them to lose them, it means costs them a life.

If I own a car, then after ten years of owning and driving it, I trade it to buy something else, that thing still cost me a car. The amount of car I have does not decrease over time but through use. It's quality might, but the count does not care about quality. Same with life. People who are middle-aged do not only have half a life, they are still fully alive.

[-] Kacarott@feddit.de 1 points 10 months ago

I think where the difference lies is that you are interpreting "cost X lives" to mean "cost X lifetimes of Human experience" while the interpretation I, and articles use is more like "cost X people their status of being alive"

[-] idiomaddict@feddit.de 6 points 10 months ago

You bring up a good point, what does it actually mean? If eight people have their lives shortened by a decade, is that one life lost or eight?

[-] XbSuper@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

None, they all had lives.

[-] idiomaddict@feddit.de 2 points 10 months ago

And then they lost them

[-] vrek@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

To make it more complicated does every decade matter the same? Does your twenty's when you are out partying matter as much as your thirty/forties when you are most profitable for your capitalist overloads? What about your nineties when you are frail of health but hopefully surrounded by loved ones?

[+] LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world -31 points 10 months ago

Good. Government shouldn't be telling people what they do with their bodies.

[-] Marsupial@quokk.au 28 points 10 months ago

Seatbelts greatly upset you don’t they?

[-] maynarkh@feddit.nl 8 points 10 months ago

I'd say that I'm okay with that sentiment as long as there is a ban in public places.

[-] LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

I'm 100% okay keeping it out of public spaces.

[-] idiomaddict@feddit.de 8 points 10 months ago

But the government picks up the payment costs, and the other costs include reduced hospital spaces, which directly impacts other people.

I understand your perspective if people are truly independent of one another, but we’re not. We rely on one another and impact each other. That means a reduction in freedom for an increase in security.

I do wish there were a way to opt out, so that people could do whatever they want with their own bodies without harming others, but we’re not there now, so we shouldn’t just accept a reduction in our ability to receive treatment we’re entitled to, to enable freedoms that don’t fit our actual system.

[-] Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago

Would you support a law that said public healthcare is unavailable to those who choose to smoke? That would seem to be a reasonable compromise.

[-] idiomaddict@feddit.de 4 points 10 months ago

I would want to support that, but with a lot of caveats. If there were no chance of a shortage of hospital beds, and people were grandfathered in and given plenty of warning. There’s also the fact that it’s basically impossible to enforce. It would be easy and strongly incentivized to lie about and very difficult and expensive to investigate.

It’s also morally difficult, because one cigarette doesn’t cause cancer. I can absolutely see people who aren’t regular smokers and who aren’t increasing their chances of illness bumming a cigarette once a decade- should they lose access to healthcare? I don’t really think so (because the goal isn’t to punish smokers, but to protect non smokers), but I don’t know how you could write a law that would protect them.

[-] crandlecan@mander.xyz 3 points 10 months ago

🤡

[-] LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world -3 points 10 months ago

👌

[-] Akasazh@feddit.nl 1 points 10 months ago

I used to think so too. But the fault her is the governments dependance on the tax revenue. They will keep raising taxes, putting those choosing to smoke up with ever slightly increasing cost of living, boiling them like a frog.

As a smoker of twenty years who stopped over a year ago. Thank fuck I beat that addiction, they aren't getting my money anymore.

this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023

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