Here is the news: 13 people died yesterday in an entirely
preventable tragedy.
Here is tomorrow's news: a further 13 people have died as the
result of a predictable disaster.
Here is the news for the day after tomorrow: yet another 13
people have perished in what is widely considered to have
been an avoidable calamity.
That the scale of this ongoing affliction, which this year
will kill almost 5000 New Zealanders, and the certainty it
will occur, remain peripheral to the public consciousness
only exacerbates the tragedy.
Imagine if it could be foretold, with equal certainty, that
tomorrow on a particular road at a particular intersection a
vehicle crash would occur in which 13 people would be killed.
And imagine the uproar that, aware of this, the Government,
the Ministry of Transport and the police, and motorists
themselves did nothing to prevent it.
Every year in this country smoking kills about 10 times the
number of people who die on the roads.
One of the problems of addressing, publicising and curtailing
the number of deaths due to smoking is the diffuse,
cumulative and often invisible nature of the diseases though
which mortality occurs.
Smoking harms nearly every organ and system in the body.
It is the cause of 80% of lung cancer cases and is linked to
many other cancers.
It is a major cause of heart attacks, heart disease, stroke
and respiratory diseases such as emphysema and chronic
bronchitis.
It is estimated that half of this country's 700,000 smokers -
about a fifth of the 15-plus population - will die from a
smoking-related disease and that those smokers will lose on
average 15 years of life compared with non-smokers.
It will account for 31% of all Maori deaths.
Further, the health system spends more than $200 million
annually on treating smoking-related diseases; and the
overall costs to society through lost productivity, loss of
income for housing, nutrition, and retirement savings is
estimated at up to $22.5 billion. The Ministry of Health is,
in fact, only too aware of this and far from doing nothing
has a proactive strategy for reducing the number of
tobacco-related deaths.
In 2004, it deployed legislation to become the third country
in the world after Ireland and Norway to make all indoor
workplaces including bars and restaurants, smoke-free,
following years of definitive research showing that passive
smoking and second-hand smoke kills an estimated 388
non-smokers in the country every year.
It promotes the health benefits of non-smoking, and it has
active stop-smoking services, including subsidised nicotine
replacement therapy.
