Ben Youdan: Action for Smokefree 2025 Director on the excise tax cut on heated tobacco products

There's a belief tax cuts to heated tobacco products will make a big difference for smokers. 

Customs Minister Casey Castello has faced criticism for cutting the excise tax by 50%. 

There are concerns over the lack of evidence to support the product and its possible appeal for young nonsmokers. 

Action for Smokefree 2025 Director Ben Youdan told Mike Hosking it's an effective cessation tool. 

He says for smokers who can't get into vaping, the tax cut will make this option very appealing. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A bit of angst around the move by the government

(00:02):
yesterday and what they call this heated tobacco products. They're
cutting the excise text by fifty percent. The theory is
they want to make vaping more attractive as a smoking cessation,
till the action for smoke for Your twenty twenty five
director Ben Newden's we there's been morning.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
To you, Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Isn't vaping a cessation tall or if we suddenly decided
it's not.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Vaping has been incredibly successful for tens different hundreds of
thousands of people in New Zealand to stop smoking. The
products that the ministers have the exercise tax, and they're
not actually vapes. What they are is that they are
sort of tightly packed cartridges of tobacco that go into
a device that heats them. So there's somewhere between cigarettes

(00:41):
and vaping, probably near a vaping in terms of much
less harmful, being much less harmful than smoking. But they
are actually a tobacco product.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
So you can understand the logic though to a degree,
can't you?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Yeah, absolutely, And you know in it's argue that actually
these sorts of products may well and probably do have
a place in terms of helping people who smoke to
stop smoking or to substantially to reduce their harm, particularly
those people who smoke for a really long time and
struggling to quit. Vaping is not working for them, and
so you know, there's absolutely a logic and providing some

(01:15):
kind of financial incentive for people to switch to them
and reduce their harm and stop smoking, because.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
I can't work out what all the angsters about unless
they're going back to that whole you know, mooreal chest
not the head when Cases Costello came in, she's allegiedly
too close to the tobacco and this is all big
scandal and stuff like that. But if you're helping people,
you're helping people, what else do you want to do
for goodness sake?

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Well, I think that's right, and I think the challenge
for many people is that there's this kind of ethical
dilemma that the tobacco industry make these products when people
have spent careers, including myself, fighting this industry, that it's
not as simple as it used to be. And actually
the industry is if we're forcing it to transform and
make safer products and less harmful product perhaps there is

(01:56):
a place for theirs to help people stop smoking, and
if we can do it in a way which means
that they're getting to the people they're going to help
and keeping them at the hands of people that we
don't want to use them, then I think we need
to start thinking in a more complex way about how
we allow people to access such things.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Very well said Ben, You have a good week in
Ben Uden, Who's the action for Smoke Free twenty twenty
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