When NZ Capitulated To The Smoking & Vaping Deathmongers – an ugly truth

Let Them Smoke - How the Government Sold Our Children for Ash and Profit

This is not a policy reversal. This is not regulatory reform. This is an act of premeditated, state-sanctioned human sacrifice.

In March 2024, the New Zealand Government, a Frankenstein stitched together from stitched-up promises, ideological rot and the nicotine-stained fingerprints of industry lobbyists, repealed the Smokefree Generation law. A law that would have ended the sale of tobacco to anyone born after 2009. A law that would have saved thousands of lives. A law that carried the faint scent of hope.

Now it carries the reek of betrayal.

This rancid coalition - National, ACT and NZ First, looked at a policy designed to stop children becoming lifelong addicts and said - nah, let’s keep the cancer coming.

Policy by the Butcher’s Knife

Gone are the mandates for low-nicotine cigarettes. Gone is the reduction in tobacco retailers. The goal of a smokefree Aotearoa by 2025? Punted into 2061 for Māori communities, if it comes at all. The message to Māori is chilling in its clarity - your suffering is negotiable.

Why?

To keep Philip Morris smiling. To lubricate a dirty little deal where NZ First gave up the foreign buyer tax and got to play grim reaper with our tamariki in return.

Associate Health Minister Casey Costello, in a display of PR necromancy, called it “pragmatic.” Let me translate - we’ve decided a few thousand more preventable deaths is a price worth paying for political convenience. That’s not pragmatism. That’s moral necrosis with a ministerial title.

The “Freedom” to Die

They say it was about choice. The same tired libertarian fairytale they drag out to defend casinos, loan sharks and fossil fuels.

But children don’t choose addiction. They’re targeted by an industry that has spent decades chemically calibrating dependency, the kind that wraps around your lungs, your brain, your whakapapa, until the only choice left is burial or bankruptcy.

The tobacco lobby knows this. The Ministry of Health warned against repeal. Māori health experts begged for sense. Public polling was clear - 60% opposed. But democracy, it turns out, is optional when you’ve got donors to please.

This wasn’t a debate. It was a corporate coup.

A Death Economy

We’re being governed by a coalition that sees death not as a tragedy, but as an economic opportunity. Every life cut short? A savings on superannuation. Every hospitalised smoker? Another chance to defund public health and blame the system. Every grieving whānau? A photo op if they’re white, a statistic if they’re not.

This repeal won’t just kill people. It will profit from their pain.

And if you listen closely enough, through the speeches about “regulatory overreach” and “black market risk”, you can hear the coughing. The hacking. The final exhale of a man who started smoking when he was 13, because Parliament said it was fine.

This is what happens when our lawmakers become undertakers in suits.

Government Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION TO THE LIVING (AND THOSE STILL BREATHING)

“A New Dawn of Freedom - Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em”

The coalition Government today proudly announced the Freedom to Die Poor and Addicted Amendment Bill, ensuring that corporate sponsors retain full access to the lungs of tomorrow.

“We believe in choice,” said Associate Health Minister Casey Costello, while standing beside a billboard for Marlboro’s ‘Legacy Edition’ youth starter pack. “Specifically, the freedom of corporations to profit from early death and the freedom of governments to cash in on that slow genocide.”

Key benefits of the new policy include -

·         Increased GDP from funeral services

·         Higher retail engagement in rural towns (now with more tobacco shops than playgrounds)

·         Reduced need for university funding (as smokers statistically die younger)

This bold new direction puts the “free” back in “smokefree.” You’re welcome.

Letter to the Editor – Māori Health Organisation

To the Editor,

There are decisions so devoid of integrity, so soaked in intergenerational violence, that they deserve to be named for what they are - acts of war against our people.

Make no mistake, the repeal of the Smokefree Generation laws is not about freedom. It is about disposability. Māori were making progress. We were building healthier communities, with fewer funerals, fewer child-smokers, fewer amputations and cancers.

And then a Cabinet of political cowards sold our future back to Big Tobacco, like a corrupt landlord flipping state housing to a casino.

This was a chance to lead the world. Instead, you chose to fill the morgues and burn the evidence.

Do not call this economic realism. Call it what it is - state violence dressed as policy.

— Dr Mereana Tipene, Director, Māori Smokefree Equity Network

Letter to the Editor – Individual Impact

To the Editor,

My name is Teuila. My mum died with a hole in her throat. She smoked since she was 12. She never got to see my daughter graduate.

I voted for change. I marched for it. When they passed the smokefree law, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years - hope.

This week, my daughter asked me what “repeal” means. I told her it means someone decided her life was worth less than someone’s campaign donation.

I can’t scream loud enough to be heard by people who sleep on satin pillows, so I’m writing this instead - you know what you’ve done and history will too.

— Teuila Fatu, Christchurch

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