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Nadine Higgins: We need to think carefully about becoming smokefree

Author
Nadine Higgins,
Publish Date
Thu, 1 Jun 2017, 6:30AM
Photo \ Supplied
Photo \ Supplied

Nadine Higgins: We need to think carefully about becoming smokefree

Author
Nadine Higgins,
Publish Date
Thu, 1 Jun 2017, 6:30AM

Winston Peters is denouncing the defence force’s plans to become the first smokefree military in the world by 2020.

They plan on banning the sale of cigarettes at army bases and camps and making military housing smoke free.

They employ some 14,000 people, about 12% of them smoke - so it’s going to be a big change for a significant number of people.

Winston Peters said, alongside claims of government hypocrisy that if we’re going to send people off to die they should at least be able to have a smoke first.

Given smoking kills you slowly - it’s basically suicide on an installment plan - but war can kill you quickly, you can kinda see his point. If you’re risking your life for your job it’s tempting to just say who cares, let them smoke.

But, given the defence force is one of the biggest employers in the country, this is a hugely symbolic move.

Plus I imagine when you’re dealing with heavy machinery and explosives there are some pretty stringent restrictions on where and when you can smoke already.

However, I do think we need to think carefully about how we go about this plan - or rather idea, there isn’t really a plan yet - we need to think carefully about this idea to be smokefree by 2025.

Don’t get me wrong - I hate smoking.

I hate when smokers smoke around me, I hate when smokers just flick their butts onto the ground, I hate when smokers say their Nan smoked until she was 99 and she was fine so it must be totally harmless and I hate hate hate when people smoke in cars with kids in them.

And I’d love it if we were smoke free by 2025.

But we can’t be so one-eyed in our drive to become smokefree that we harm people in the process.

For example they’ve banned smoking on hospital grounds - great call - but that also includes mental health facilities.

Remember 21 year old Chelsea Brunton? She was a mental health patient in Palmerston North earlier this year and because of the rules, she left the premises to have a smoke and was never seen alive again.

In 2015 Nicky Stevens, who had schizophrenia, went out of the mental health unit he was being held at for an unsupervised cigarette break and was found dead three days later. In some cases, we need to consider -  is smoking really the greatest and most urgent risk to their health?

But for the military Winston Peters seems to be harking back to an era when soldiers were hunkered down in trenches smoking their way through their PTSD and through the boredom that punctuated the terror.

These days our military is full of professionals, in reality only a small number are stationed in war zones, and very few die in service, so there’s every reason to expect they will live to see a long life and thus every reason to look after their health.

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