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Give up smoking and save money, health on World Smokefree Day

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Give up and save money, health on World Smokefree Day

3News NZ

Giving up smoking will improve your health and your bank balance (file)

Giving up smoking will improve your health and your bank balance (file)

Take yourself out for lunch every day, enjoy a massage twice a week, buy a new outfit each month or fly to London every Christmas - that's if you quit smoking.

It’s World Smokefree Day today and Kiwi smokers are being encouraged to stub out so they can enjoy better health and more cash in the pocket.

A pack of cigarettes costs about $14, and a daily packet habit will cost over $5000 a year.

This is set to rise to $20 a pack by 2016 with an annual 10 percent rise in tobacco tax starting in next year.

Quitline chief executive Paula Snowden told NZ Newswire she welcomed the price hike, saying it had already prompted an increase in calls to the Quitline service since the announcement.

"I encourage smokers to join the growing number of people who are acting on the desire to quit," she says.

"We know that 80 percent of smokers wish they had never started and 75 percent say they want to quit and price is a good trigger for that.

"People quit for the same reasons - health and family but money is driving people to take the bull by the horns and quit."

Ms Snowden, an ex-smoker herself, says New Zealand was on the right track to fulfilling the Government's aim for the country to be smoke-free by 2025.

About 21 percent of the adult population are smokers, down from 33 percent in 1983 and an estimated 5000 people die from smoking related illnesses each year.

Quitline helps smokers stub out by offering support and smoking cessation products.

If you're quitting, remember the four D's:

  •  Delay
  •  Drink water
  •  Do something else
  •  Deep breath.

NZN

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Comments

31/05/2012 9:51:39 p.m.

Shaun wrote:

As if all those people who die annually from smoking-related illness lived near commercial factory smokestacks, and their cigarette consumption contributed less. Are readers of Davids' post meant to accept smoking is harmless just because there are factory smokestacks around? If he is going to account for the influence of these, then at least consider their effects in tandem with cigarettes. Either you acknowledge that factory-made cigarettes are harmful (ie., warranting attention) or you don't. If it is the latter, it is your reasoning that is dodgy - you claim that "Toxic fumes pumped into the air by factories are probably the true cause of half those deaths" then state of factory made cigarettes: "the added chemicals that cigarette companies add to increase your addiction". In cigarettes specifically (not smokestacks or fireplaces..) there are over 4000 chemicals, and at least 200 carcinogens have been identified. Please cut the crap.

31/05/2012 10:55:33 a.m.

David wrote:

Or give up smoking branded cigarettes and grow your own at home. $1 per packet for 50 grams of rolling tobacco (homegrown)... as compared to commercial tobacco heavily taxed by the government which costs $50.00 for 50grams. The thing that ASH dont tell you is that people who die from certain conditions are put down as cigarette related deaths... however its just as likely if you live next door or close to a commercial factory with a smoke stack... that that is the true cause of a persons death. Toxic fumes pumped into the air by factories are probably the true cause of half those deaths. I'm not saying smoking is good... but the statistics are all blown out of proportion to reality. Homegrown tobacco tastes better, costs 50 times less and doesnt have the added chemicals that cigarette companies add to increase your addiction.