'$l50Min tax from smokers’

Press, 22 October 1980, Page 14

'$ l 50 Mi n tax from smokers’

p A ' Wellington . Smokers will contribute about $l5O million in taxes in the year to next June, according to Mr K. D. Rutland, chairman of Rothmans Industries, Ltd, at the company’s annual meeting this week. •

He said that about a third of the adult population smoked. “It is small wonder that smokers are now voicing their resentment at the extent of the penal levies to which they are subjected and the. constant attempts to influence their freedom of choice,” he said.

“Apparently not content with the financial discrimination already imposed on the users of tobacco, Government and other agencies, encouraged by anti-smoking activists, are moving the emphasis or their propaganda away from the original contention that smoking was harmful to smokers,” Mr Butland said.

. These , groups were now making emotional claims about the effect of smoking in public areas on nonsmokers and were employing publicity designed to denigrate smokers in. social situations.

He said tobacco . users were entitled to know that the weight of scientific evidence was that tobacco in the air around smokers was not harmful to others.