Editorial: When smoke gets in your eyes – Time for Casey Costello to go

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Associate Health Minister Casey Costello’s performance over tobacco policy has become an embarrassment to the Government. Photo / Mark Mitchell
EDITORIAL

It’s now well past time for Casey Costello to step down or be removed as Associate Minister of Health. Her dismal performance over tobacco policy has become embarrassing for the Government and, more importantly, has increased the number of people who will die from lung
cancer, heart disease and other known effects of smoking.

Immediately after the election, Costello led the coalition Government’s decision to scrap Labour’s 2022 smokefree generation legislation, which had introduced a steadily rising smoking age to ban tobacco sales to anyone born from 2009 onwards. The law, which inspired a similar move by Britain’s Conservative Party, also dramatically reduced the legal amount of nicotine in tobacco products and slashed the number of stores allowed to sell cigarettes from 6000 to 600 nationwide.
The reversal surprised most New Zealanders because it had barely figured in the election campaign. It horrified public health experts, who said it would cost up to 5000 lives a year. Finance Minister Nicola Willis claimed NZ First and Act had insisted on it but admitted National needed the extra tobacco sales revenue to pay for its promised tax cuts.
Since then, Costello has forged her own path. In December last year, shortly after being appointed Associate Health Minister, she sent health officials a document which claimed “nicotine is as harmful as caffeine” – a phrase pushed by the tobacco industry – and argued that Labour’s smokefree generation policy was “nanny state nonsense”.
In February, she denied the existence of the document in response to a written parliamentary question. The Chief Ombudsman has since ruled she had acted “contrary to law” in withholding the information and forced her to apologise and release it. Costello still maintains she does not know who wrote the document or who gave it to her.
In July, she halved the excise tax on heated tobacco products (HTPs), at a cost of up to $216 million, on the grounds they would help people give up smoking – a claim ridiculed by public health experts. Those experts were supported by Treasury advice, which said HTPs were toxic and more harmful than vaping.
The advice also showed tobacco company Philip Morris’ IQOS device was the only heated tobacco product available in New Zealand. Costello replied that she had taken independent advice but refused to say what it was.
At this point, the saga descended into farce. It has emerged in the last few weeks that the IQOS device cannot be sold legally in New Zealand under anti-vaping laws – which Costello tried and failed to postpone further – and that her independent advice was a grab-bag of articles with little or no relevance to the argument.
Costello has consistently denied any links to the tobacco industry. But it is a bad look, to say the least, that it has been the main beneficiary of her actions, especially Philip Morris, for which two former senior NZ First staffers work.
The bigger issue is the damage she is doing to New Zealanders’ health. A Lancet article last week calculated a worldwide generational tobacco ban could save more than 1.1 million deaths from lung cancer, including 11,600 in Australia and New Zealand. Costello has a lot to answer for.
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