Shop sales of tobacco challenged

An Auckland academic says smoking rates in New Zealand would plummet if tobacco products could not be displayed at shops.

Dr Marewa Glover, of the University of Auckland, told a select committee yesterday that progress in tobacco control was poor and it was having a particularly bad effect among Maori.

She said outside the hearing that she disagreed with tobacco industry giant British American Tobacco New Zealand that banning smoking or restricting its sale would merely produce an uncontrolled black market.

"There just will not be the death and illness to such an extent from so few people smoking, and the fastest way to do that is to get rid of the product off the shelves," Dr Glover said.

She said British American Tobacco's suggestion they were offering a legal product which people were choosing to use was "a pack of lies".

"Nicotine is highly addictive and people do not have freedom of choice. It's a psychoactive drug; it works on the brain, it manipulates thought, it manipulates motivation and they are driven to smoke."

Dr Glover said she did not want smoking banned but she wanted its over-the-counter sale banned, leaving it for internet purchase or grow-your-own customers only.

When asked about removing the product from visibility in stores but not removing it altogether, British American Tobacco managing director Graeme Amey said research showed this would have little impact on the prevalence of smoking.

But after Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei asked why his company opposed this move if it would make no impact on smoking, Mr Amey said it could lose market share as a result.

"We operate a commercial business and we are in the business of improving market share," he said. "Brand switching would become an issue."

Mr Amey would not tell the committee its marketing strategies in an open hearing, saying it was commercially sensitive. He said he would provide them to the committee confidentially.

Maori Party MP Hone Harawira thanked British American Tobacco for addressing the committee, but said he hoped that once the inquiry was complete, "we can ban these products forever".

Dr Glover said much of tobacco marketing came via its packet design, and removing these from public view would therefore help reduce smoking.

She told the committee that more than half Maori women of childbearing age were smokers, more than double the rate of the whole population, and that smoking among Maori women 14-18 weeks into pregnancy was still high at 45%.

She said 62% of the 328 sudden unexpected deaths among infants between 2003 and 2007 were Maori.

As well as restricting sales, services to help people quit smoking had to be easier to access, Dr Glover said.

"That sort of help needs to be as easy as going to the dairy to buy a packet of smokes."