The 2008 Health and Lifestyles Survey compiled nationwide interviews from the Health Sponsorship Council of 1608 people, including 422 smokers, and has just been published in the NZ Medical Journal.
It found 49.8 percent of people agreed cigarettes should no longer be sold in New Zealand in 10 years, 30.3 percent disagreed and 19.9 percent neither agreed nor disagreed. Of the smokers surveyed, 26.2 percent agreed and 55.3 percent disagreed.
The study also showed public support for plain, unbranded cigarette packets and fewer tobacco retailers.
Pacific Islanders, in particular, showed strong support for the measures.
One of the study’s authors, Dr. George Thomson, from the University of Otago, Wellington, called on the government to take action.
“There’s now a need for politicians to embrace and act on the idea of a foreseeable and planned end to tobacco sales through a predicable timetable by 2020. The public wants more defined action to reduce smoking, and not a series of incremental steps.”
The researchers said smoking was more affordable now than in 2001 and said the government should increase tobacco taxes.
The average income had gone up but tobacco tax had not been raised above inflation.
