Kiwis beat us again

It was bad enough that the Kiwis beat us by 24 runs to claim the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy One Day International cricket series in February. And in the rugby … well, pretty much every time in recent memory.

Now they’ve done it again.  On Tuesday, New Zealand’s Associate Health Minister Nicky Wagner announced that her government would legalise the sale of nicotine e-cigarettes and e-liquid in the Land of the Long White Cloud.

Australia is increasingly isolated. E-cigarettes are available in the UK, Europe, the US, Canada. Public Health England says e-cigarettes are 95 percent safer than the ordinary kind.

Yet despite the warnings of doctors that more people will die of preventable illnesses unless e-cigarettes are available, in February the Therapeutic Goods Administration rejected an application which would have made it legal to put nicotine in e-cigarettes.

Why? To spite Big Tobacco.  As professor of public health Simon Chapman put it, “The tobacco industry will unanimously condemn this decision — this is all anyone needs to know about why it should be welcomed.”

That’s fine for well-off Australians like Chapman – only 7 percent of them smoke – but it will hurt the most disadvantaged. Almost 20 percent of the poor, almost 40 percent of indigenous Australians, almost 60 percent of young single mums, more than 90 percent of the homeless sleeping rough and about three quarters of people in prison are smokers.

The plight of the mentally ill is particularly tragic.  Just published research shows that up to 90 percent of people with schizophrenia smoke.  As a result, nearly 80 percent of people with serious mental illness die prematurely, losing between 10 and 36 years of life.  Yet it is extremely hard to quit because nicotine plays an important role in alleviating their symptoms.

Former health minister Nicola Roxon once said, “When you have someone in your family die of cancer of course if you see an opportunity to prevent other families going through the same thing you would grab it.”  That’s how the families and friends of the mentally ill feel.

Over to you, Health Minister Greg Hunt.  The science is settled.  We followed the Kiwis signing an FTA with China; let’s follow their compassionate, common sense lead on nicotine