By Kim Choe
Philip Morris says "your opinion counts" - if you're a smoker.
It has set up a website as part of the first public campaign by a tobacco company in New Zealand to fight back against the Government's attempts to stamp out smoking.
“They can sign up, they can see news and stories about tobacco regulatory issues, and then down the line they'll have the ability to communicate their views to decision makers and have their say,” says Philip Morris corporate affairs manager Christopher Bishop.
The company is promoting the site by giving shop owners cards to hand out to customers buying Philip Morris cigarettes.
“It's a last-ditch attempt by a company that's running scared when typically tobacco companies in New Zealand have stayed in the shadows,” says Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) director Ben Youdan.
Mr Youdan says he doesn't think the campaign will have any effect on Government policy.
“The fact they've released this website and they're now trying to recruit the same people they're killing with their products to defend their right to kill those people just shows that they're not being listened to by the Government. They no longer have any credibility as a responsible citizen,” he says.
Mr Bishop argues the campaign is about listening to its customers.
“What our consumers tell us is that they think regulation's gone too far, and they want a chance to have a say on issues like plain packaging, like display bans, like excise tax hikes, and on public smoking bans.”
But Philip Morris won't say whether it will pass all feedback its website receives onto the Government, or whether it will choose the ones that best suit its cause.
Similar publicity campaigns by tobacco companies in Australia failed to win any concessions from the government there, which is working to ensure cigarettes will have to be sold in logo-free, plain packaging from December.
3 News