Analysis: The Government is concerned about ram-raids with a reduced number of tobacco outlets, but is bringing back pseudoephedrine which once pushed up ram-raids around New Zealand. Q+A presenter Jack Tame looks at the justifications behind these two policies.
The reaction to the repeal of New Zealand’s smokefree legislation appears to have surprised some representatives of the new government.
The coalition agreements for both ACT and New Zealand First made the repeal a priority.
But less than 10% of New Zealanders are smokers, and although some voters may have supported repealing the changes for ideological reasons, the smokefree restrictions were likely not a concern for most people.
To justify its place in his government’s 100-day plan, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says restricting the number of smoked tobacco retailers would have led to an increase in crime and ram-raids.
But at the same time his government leans on this reasoning for scrapping the smokefree restrictions, it is reintroducing pseudoephedrine, the sale of which previously led to a massive, demonstrable surge in similar kinds of crime.
In one respect, the two positions seem incoherent. But the changes to tobacco and pseudoephedrine policies and the justification behind them are less comparable than they might appear.
Much more significant than the smokefree plans to reduce the number of tobacco retailers was the plan to massively reduce the nicotine content of smoked tobacco.
By April 2025, cigarettes in New Zealand would only have had 5-10% of the nicotine of cigarettes sold today. You’d have to smoke half a pack to get the same buzz as you might from a single cigarette.
Given the dramatically reduced nicotine content, it’s hard to imagine criminals being any more incentivised to target legal tobacco retailers than they are today.
Are our remaining smokers really so desperate for low-nicotine tobacco that it would drive a significant market in stolen cigarettes? In an age when full-strength vaping products are so readily available, it seems extremely unlikely.
Surely of greater concern with the smokefree changes was the potential for a black market in full-strength cigarettes, smuggled into the country from overseas.
But given the size of a packet of cigarettes (roughly 20 grams) and the quantity of cigarettes consumed by many remaining smokers (up to a pack a day), smuggling full-strength cigarettes would be much less lucrative than many or most illicit drugs. There would surely be a black market in some form, but compared to many drugs, smuggling vast quantities of full-strength tobacco just wouldn’t make economic sense.
The methamphetamine market has moved on
The pseudoephedrine policy is different.
Pseudoephedrine sales were banned because of their role in domestic methamphetamine production and the corresponding criminal targeting of pharmacies.
But since the ban came into place in 2011, methamphetamine seizures have increased, while the price of the drug has steadily and substantially dropped.
The market has moved on. Rather than preparing the drug in New Zealand, criminals have worked out it makes much more economic sense to cook vast quantities of methamphetamine in industrial operations overseas, before smuggling the drug into the country.
Although re-introducing pseudoephedrine sales might lead to a small increase in domestic methamphetamine production, most of the drug is still likely to come from international sources.
From a criminal perspective, why will it still make economic sense to smuggle in methamphetamine if it wouldn’t have made sense under the smokefree changes to smuggle in full-strength cigarettes?
Methamphetamine sells for roughly $400 a gram. If a single packet of cigarettes were methamphetamine instead, it would be worth roughly $8000.
The new government justifies scrapping the smokefree changes by talking about a potential for an increase in ram-raids and robberies. There’s good reason to think those concerns are unjustified.
But there’s also good reason to think reintroducing pseudoephedrine will not lead to crime in the same way it did in the past.
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