Good on you Hone !! Get it banned then the Maori gangs can sell it on the black market along with the p and marijuana, and make lots more money eh?

#4 - Some of the drugs you mentioned are legal in some countries. The legalisation worked quite well since the market is now regulated instead driven underground.

People are animals but they also have enough abstract thought to dig themselves out if they are truly motivated enough to do so. We already explored hitting people in the pocket. Graphic (and now not so graphic) images on cigarette boxes were used. A half hearted attempt at trying to make smoking look "less cool" was made as well.

Smoking has been severely limited now in some countries with restriction in places to smoke as well as turning peer pressure, the very thing that gets people smoking, to make people stop smoking.

From my understanding this story is about calling the profiteers of our demise to account directly & not have professional spin doctors distract enquiries from the truth. No one singular concept can be attributed to around 100 people a week (5000 annually) to die other than smoking. In a country of nearly 4M population, thats horrific! We talk about terrible road death rates of around 400 pr/yr, prostate cancer about the same. If you set aside the percieved gain from taxes, Maori party involvement, "big tobacco" involvement, what you have left is seccessive Governments, through inertia & pandering, that simply do not care enough about it's citizens to affect change. I can see no logical arguement against this statement. It's actually an international problem. If you take up smoking, tobacco companies, despite taxes, have state-sanctioned permission to manipulate your free will and take your life so they can earn money. It just so happens that the Maori Party of Aotearoa will seek answers to the justification of this from those who perpetrate & not their lawyers or spin doctors - THOSE ARE THE FACTS, LET STICK TO THE FACTS & NOT MAKE THIS A RACE ISSUE. Personally, Im a liberalist & if you want to smoke, go for it, but don't be one of those lazy idiots who just throw their butts into the street still alight & be aware that being around a person who has just had a ciggie, is like being around someone who farts all the time. Get away from me!! Rangi.

I heard Hone Harawira on Radio NZ last night and he earned enormous respect from me. He talks more sense on this issue than any politician I have ever heard in all my years. He's completely correct that cigarette company profits are gained by the killing of 5,000 people a year in this country, and that there is something very, very wrong with it. His is the only voice calling them to account. I hope his proposed legislation gets adopted. It is eminently sensible, and above all a well thought out, moral position. Well done to John Key for not stifling him. Now for National to support the Maori Party's proposed legislation and the respect will be well deserved.

"Mr Harawira announced today the Maori Affairs parliamentary select committee would hold an inquiry into the impact of tobacco use on Maori."

"Banning tobacco sales was different to prohibition because people wanted it and there was unlikely to be a massive increase in black market operations."

Two comments from the Clown Prince of Parliament.

Like said above, this research has already been carried out and put in various reports and previous enquires have already stated the fact that Maori are statistically more addicted to smoking, the reasons behind this AND what it's impact on them as a people it has had.

What more research and inquiries can be carried out!? It seems as if there has to be an enquiry into this subject every year - or should that be 4 years.... an awful coincidence that a new government gets elected in that same time period. Perhaps a little cross-party support/back room back-scratching going on?

What a joke.

Once again any news item that contains the word Maori never fails to bring out the closet racists and "why can't they be like us" brigade. What they are really trying to say in a very veiled way is "we don't do this, they do, so they must be inferior to us".

Racism is all about a perception of superiority based on genetic and cultural and historic factors. We still have a long way to go on this one. Perhaps we will be able to breed the racism out of us!

However this article is not about race but smoking.

This inquiry is for all of us not only Maori, it is just that Hone has the Mana and courage to take on these corporate giants that the rest of parliament seems so reluctant to go near.

Smoking is about choice, however people start smoking as children, you never find someone that began smoking from their late twenties onwards. In order to survive the tobacco industry needs children to take up the habit.

Good on you Cuz.

David #5. As a smoker of over 20 years I have paid so much in TAX on cigarettes that when I fall ill I should get priority treatment with gold plated syringes.

Smokers contribute more money to the health system than anybody else, way more. So you understand a 50grm packet of tobacco costs around $35 and the tobacco companies sell them for $12, that is a TAX rate of about 290%. If the Government stopped smoking they simply couldn't afford health care. Smokers don't cost that much in the health system mainly because they die very quickly compares with other illnesses.

In 2006 the TAX take on tobacco was equal to 64% of the health budget......

Careful what you wish for and consider both sides of the sword before passing over all judgements.

Why does everything in society now days have to be about race?

I smoked for 40 years and stopped a year ago because it's stupid, deadly, and expensive. HOWEVER, the original choice to start smoking was mine not the tobacco company's.

Why would this affect maori more than any other race?

Everyone knows the dangers of it. Anyone that WANTS to stop just has to stop buying them, and stop putting them in your mouth and setting fire to them. It really IS that easy. Everyone has a free will. Everyone that has personal responsibility anyway.