Cigarette sales decline

Press, 26 June 1987, Page 5

Cigarette sales decline

PA Wellington Cigarette sales-are 20 per, cent down on last year, said a Health Department medical

officer, Dr Murray Laugesen. He attributed the fall from 500 million cigarettes released for a sale a month, to 400 million to the combined impact of the Great New Zealand Smoke-Free Week, and the 55 per cent price increase in last year’s Budget However, the price of cigarettes in real terms was now 10 per cent lower than it was after that Budget, in spite of an increase of about 6c a packet imposed by tobacco companies in March, he said. -

Last week’s Budget has been attacked by Action on Smoking and Health (A.S.H.) for not further taxing cigarettes, financing the promotion of nonsmoking.

“Promises that the Government would emphasise preventive medicine was exposed as pure rhetoric. Our children deserve better than this,” A.S.H. said.

“We spend a tiddly amount the equivalent of 5c a pupil on non-smok-ing education,” said the A.S.H. director, Ms Deirdre Kent. She also condemned the lack of funding of a follow-up to the Great New Zealand Smoke-Free Week.