The past years of tobacco prize hikes had its positive effects on cutting the amount of smokers, which is happy to hear about. There is nothing wrong in the intentions of people who are seeking more prize hikes, for making New Zealand smokefree by 2025. However, to think of New Zealand as smokefree in 2025 is no less than a huge illusion.

Drugs will be used as long as there will be humans, and for the last couple of hundred years, tobacco has been among those drugs. It is sad that more tobacco price hikes could cause some serious unnecessary and unhealthy side effects.

‘Illegalization’ of tobacco has been tried but, prohibition or exorbitant price hikes have always resulted into illegal markets. Sale of illegal tobacco is practiced on the black market in New Zealand.

Now, organized crime and gangs have willingly started taking part into an apt illegal market, being created by the government.

Illegalization has some downsides. Government isn’t getting any taxes and instead, the move has been costing the government a huge amount of money: Creation of illegal markets lead to creation of criminals. Such a thing puts more financial pressure on police and the justice system.

In the recent times, government has been increasingly losing all control over the tobacco quality. Seeing the profitability in illegal tobacco, criminals start mixing the illegal tobacco with whatever ingredients are low-priced. It doesn’t bother them that whether the ingredients they are mixing in it are harmful, can cause serious extra health risks for those smoking it or not. The other risk of such move is that criminals begin selling tobacco mixed with other drugs.

Besides this, in the areas where the smoker can purchase illegal tobacco, they will also automatically get in touch with other prohibited drugs and such drugs’ users.