In an age where
smoking is becoming increasingly frowned upon, banned and distasteful, there’s
one sector of our community where evidence suggests the message isn’t getting
through fast enough:
31%
of Maori deaths are due to cigarette smoking
46% of Maori are regular
smokers compared to 21% of non-Maori
Dying
For A Smoke (Wednesday Jul 6, 8.30pm) is an
in-depth investigation into New Zealand’s smoking problem, specifically
focusing on smoking among Maori but also looking at trends within the wider
community.It features personal stories
of smokers - people like Natasha who started smoking when she was very
young:
“I started smoking Port Royal at 11.I’m still smoking it.”
And now she can’t give up …even though
she’s pregnant:
“When
I get pregnant I smoke more.A lot
more.I was worried about how it would
affect the baby but I still can’t give up.”
What’s most alarming about Natasha’s
smoking stories is they’re not unusual among Maori:
The
median age for young Maori to first start smoking is eleven and a half
39%
of Maori women smoke while pregnant
In order to
understand how this can occur, the documentary looks at how tobacco is marketed
– seeking comments from industry experts like Jeffrey Wigand - the subject of
the Russell Crowe film The Insider.
He says many of our problems with tobacco can be tracked back to the marketing
strategies of the tobacco companies:
“The industry goes after children, it goes after
females, it goes after indigenous groups….it goes after people that are less
educated so they’re always looking to prey on the easy ones.”
The programme
also looks at how the tobacco companies get into the psyche of our young people
– first and foremost through exposure to adults smoking:
“Being
around mum and dad who smoke, tempted me to try and it didn’t really stop from
there.”
And then
impacting through subtle but highly influential ways of making tobacco
accessible and desirable to young people
– like product placement in shops and the way cigarettes and tobacco are
branded.
On these points
and issues like plain packaging of cigarettes , Imperial Tobacco agreed to a
rare on-camera interview:
“It would be wrong for tobacco displays to be taken
away. Number one it will start to undermine personal freedoms - why shouldn’t an adult smoker be allowed to
chose from a product display.”
Dying For A Smoke is an informative, shocking and
emotional documentary with a clear message - something has to be done about the
appalling rates of smoking among Maori. Preaching will not work.