NEW ZEALAND – The Maori Party is defending their decision to support the tax hike on cigarettes following criticism from one of Maoridom’s leading tobacco health researchers.

Dr Marewa Glover says the tax hasn’t made significant changes on smoking rates, instead the policy has become a racist one.

Maori Party co-leader Marama Fox is adamant the Maori Party’s choice to hike the smoking tax hasn’t created a racist policy.

Fox says, “This is not a racist policy. Smoking is racist as most of the deaths are Maori.”

Budget announcements said raising taxes by 10 per cent a year would continue until 2020, which would see some packets of cigarettes cost as much as $30.

Fox says, “This is what is needed by Maori groups who have come to me wanting their parents and communities to be smoke free.”

Fox says her party has other ways of curbing smoking including plain packaging and the possible ban on smoking in cars.

Maori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell believes there are other things that are worse.

“I think it’s not good to go to tangis on a weekly basis to hear about the fact that so many people are passing away on the back of cancer caused by smoking.”

The architect of higher tobacco taxes, Maori Party co-founder Dame Tariana Turia, has hit also back at claims by a Maori smoking researcher that continued tax hikes are “racist”.

Dame Tariana, who pushed for the policy of raising cigarette taxes by 10 per cent a year when the government agreed to it in 2010, said she still believed the policy was the best way to save the lives of 5000 people a year who die because of cigarette smoking.

“I only have to go to the cemetery by my marae to know of the deep impact that’s had on our families,” she said.

Dame Tariana said the policy of raising taxes was intended to save lives.

“This is not about being racist, because it was me who brought it in. There is absolutely no way that race comes into the argument,” she said.

“This particular initiative was about stopping the uptake of cigarettes by young people, and that has worked.

“So unless Dr Glover can prove it to me, not by doing academic studies, but by getting out and talking to our communities, then I’m highly unlikely to support her argument.”

The director of Otago University’s Health Inequalities Research Programme, Professor Tony Blakely, also refuted Dr Glover’s claims. He said other data from the census and youth health surveys showed dramatic reductions in smoking among Maori and Pacific people.

The 2013 Census found that “regular” smoking plunged from 45.5 per cent in 2006 to 34.7 per cent for Maori women, from 38.5 per cent to 30.5 per cent for Maori men, from 27.3 per cent to 20.5 per cent for Pacific women, and from 33.5 per cent to 26.2 per cent for Pacific men.

Youth health surveys by Auckland University have found that young Maori smoking cigarettes at least weekly have dropped by two-thirds, from 24.8 per cent of Maori secondary school students in 2001 to 16.5 per cent in 2007 and just 8.3 per cent in 2012.

Professor Blakely said every one per cent increase in the price of cigarettes reduced consumption by 0.4 per cent, and Maori were likely to cut back more than the average because of their lower average incomes.

He said further tax increases were still desirable.

“If that the best thing to do? I think it’s the obvious next thing to do,” he said.

He said other measures would also be required to meet an official target of reducing smoking to five per cent of all adults by 2025.

He suggested gradually lifting the legal purchasing age for cigarettes from 18 to create a “smokefree generation”.

“I just think it’s unethical to allow a new cohort of people to buy tobacco when we have a smokefree goal,” he said.

- PNC sources