Tobacco.org

• Harawira: To Smoke or to Choke 

Mr Speaker, if it’s true that 5,000 Kiwis die from tobacco every year, then it’s also true that tobacco companies are responsible for the murder of 100,000 New Zealand citizens in the last 25 years.

That’s why the Maori Party supports every effort to stop this appalling waste of life, and to break the cycle of addiction that blights our society:

* 5000 deaths every year;

* 25% of ALL cancer deaths in Aotearoa;

* a major cause of blindness and respiratory illnesses;

* diseases of the urinary tract, pelvis, bladder and the digestive tract;

* 45% Maori / 32% Pasifika / 22% Pakeha / 12% Asians;

* and one in every three Maori dying from smoking cigarettes.

That’s why the Maori Party is doing everything it can to reduce tobacco consumption, and to hold accountable those companies responsible for the deaths of those 5000 Kiwis every year.

Mr Speaker, following on from the World Health Organisation recommendations of a mix of taxation, cessation, health promotion, legislation and research strategies, Tariana Turia, co-leader of the Maori Party and Minister responsible for Tobacco Control, has called for:

* a review of smoking cessation programmes;

* an increase in tobacco tax;

* and a ban on the display of tobacco products here in Aotearoa; a law recently enacted in New South Wales, next year in the Northern Territory and ACT, and in Victoria and Tasmania in 2011; because tobacco displays are a very devious and very potent form of marketing a killer product, normalising cigarettes in the eyes of vulnerable kids, and hooking them into buying smokes from a very young age; and banning displays works – we know that because when they did it in Saskatchewan, smoking rates actually dropped 25% in just 6 years!! . . .

To be brutally frank Mr Speaker, I’d like to lynch these #$^&** tobacco company executives.

I’ve watched too many people die horrible deaths because of their addiction to tobacco, and I’ve seen too much pain and heartache in those left behind to want to be objective about this.

And I’ve heard too many chilling comments from tobacco executives like – ‘We don’t smoke this shit. We reserve that right to the young, the poor, the black and the stupid’ – to have any respect for these people at all.

Hopefully Mr Speaker, with the help of the people of New Zealand, the support of my colleagues on the Maori Affairs Select Committee, and the determination of the members of this House, we can finally bring an end to all this unnecessary waste of beautiful life.

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To be brutally frank Mr Speaker, I’d like to lynch these #$^&** tobacco company executives.
Hone Harawira, MP for Te Tai Tokerau. Tobacco companies seem to have roused New Zealand's famously war-like Maori.