Editorial: Beach ban too hard to justify

OPINION: Our country has rightly waged war on cigarette smoking. Its human toll and the treatment bill – around 5000 people a year die from smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke and treatment costs taxpayers close to $250 million annually – are terrible.

It has been estimated that if the sick had lived to the natural term of their lives, the New Zealand population would be 80,000 higher now. More importantly, we'd all have our loved ones around for longer.

New Zealand's world-leading militant approach, however, has reaped benefits, with the constant rises in tax on cigarettes, health warnings and the banning of smoking in the workplace, bars and enclosed public venues cutting the number of smokers and saving lives and the taxpayer a fortune.

In 1986, 30 per cent of the population aged 15 and over smoked. That has now dropped to under 24 per cent. The decrease in the youth only group – secondary school students – has been even more dramatic, falling from 15.5 per cent in 2001 to 7.8 per cent.

We laud this success, but recent suggestions that New Zealand's approach should go even further are too big a step. The Auckland Regional Public Health Service last week said it would urge tougher measures in a submission to the Maori affairs select committee's inquiry into the tobacco industry and the effects of tobacco use on Maori.

The Auckland service wants the ban on indoor smoking at workplaces extended to beaches, outdoor eating areas, the area outside buildings, cars when a child under 16 is present, public transport stops, pedestrian malls and playgrounds. Wouldn't it be easier to just ban cigarette sales altogether?

While the majority of us frown heavily on people smoking around their children, and agree that nothing ruins a meal more than second-hand smoke, the policing of the above will be next to impossible.

Prime Minister John Key hit it on the head when he said that preventing people smoking around kids in a park might make sense but moving to ban it at beaches seemed extreme. "I don't want to get into a nanny state where I am telling people absolutely how they run their lives in every form," he said. Bang on.

Moreover, how do you prove harm from smoking on a beach? Surely it's easier for people to move along, or to politely ask the cigarette smoker to, rather than make it an offence. While much of this is symbolic – about making smoking even more taboo – common sense must surely come in to play.

The Auckland service did have some more reasonable recommendations – taxing tobacco more, dedicating a portion of the tobacco tax take to tobacco control and quit-smoking services, banning tobacco vending machines, licensing retailers and compelling tobacco firms to disclose product specifications and marketing strategies.

These make more sense and will still send the message that we should all well know by now – smoking kills.

- © Fairfax NZ News