TOBACCO-SMOKING

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 January 1928, Page 5

TOBACCO-SMOKING

INCREASE IN DOMINION. The tobacco-habit, has assumed increasingly large proportions among New Zealanders during the past decade. Those who do not smoke are to-day far out-numbered by those who do, and even among women the habit has become the rule rather than the exception. A study of figures relative to annual cigarette and tobacco imports to the Dominion is interesting. In 1926 New Zealand imported 1,394,3021 b. of cigarettes and 2,909,2131 b of tobacco, of a total value of £1,685,749. It is safe to assume that smokers paid almost £2,000,000 in retail prices for their purchases. In round numbers a total of 557,720.800 cigarettes were smoked during 1926. Had there been a fair apportionment every man, woman and child in' the country would have received 387.

If cigarettes smoked in New Zealand in 1926 were placed end to end beside the Main Trunk Railway, they would stretch from Auckland to Wellington and back about 31 times, a distance of over 26,391 miles. On a basis of 10 cigarettes a day a person smokes 3650 a year, at a cost of £l3 13s. However, no ' heavy smoker escapes so lightly. In the latter days of last century a man who smoked cigarettes was looked upon by pipe-smokers as quite comparable witli the person who could not grow a. respectable beard or at least a flowing moustache. To-day the cigarette-smoker is almost in the ascendancy, showing the rise of the cigarette in popular esteem. The dutiable value of cigarette imports in 1913 was £177,307, while in 1926 the figure was £772,513.