The Farcical Casey Costello Saga

Do you want to hear a joke?

One day a government Minister fought very hard to help out mates with tax cuts

She scored them - a massive NZ $106 billion multinational tobacco company with shares trading at $192 each - $216 million worth of tax cuts on their star product (chicly named “IQOS”)

Not chump change at all and in all honesty the Minister was pretty chuffed with herself.

Except she forgot one small detail.

The last government had put in a law to tighten regulations on that product.

And the Minister forgot all the little details leading up to that - which effectively meant her tax cuts are now supporting an illegal product - IQOS.

Anyone else laughing?

Thought not.

And now my pet gripe about Casey Costello and her Heated-Tobacco-Product scandal -

HTP are banned in Australia and the EU as “poison”. The EU has said their marketing is deceptive.

The harm and addiction to these substances has been proven in multiple scientific studies, particularly in Japan where they were released to the public in 2014 with little scientific understanding of its impacts. They are marketed as devices to help smokers to quit - the same line Costello trots out here.

Now one has to ask - if the Aussies could figure it out years ago, why didn’t we?

Except we did of course - until Casey Costello and her band of merry men took over the country.

This year in April, The Guardian newspaper revealed leaked documents proved Philip Morris manipulated “science for profit” through funding research and advocacy work with scientists on IQOS.

It also laid out a precise plan to '“target politicians, doctors ..as part of the multinational’s marketing strategy to attract non-smokers to its heated tobacco product, IQOS.”

[Here are those strategy documents: PMJ Leaked Marketing Blueprint for Japan

And here are a couple of research papers that reveal the harm caused by HTP.

]

Guyon Espinor has done God’s work in keeping the Casey Costello report alive while Luxon feigns ignorance, claiming he hadn’t seen the evidence on HTP.

And Luxon supported her when the very small issue of her multiple tobacco lies came out i.e. yes, it turns out the policy position document based word-for-word on tobacco lobbying notes existed (at first she denied it ).

Then, when she couldn’t deny it t existed, she pivoted to saying she didn’t know who wrote it and then dived for cover - only agreeing to be interviewed by Newstalk and some fringe radio show.

Luxon, Goldsmith, David Seymour, Gary Brownlee then all parried media and Opposition politicians - for Casey.

“She’s doing a great job”

“Come on, she’s committed to smoke free”

It would be touching if it wasn’t so outright farcical.

Also farcical, in my opinion, is how journalists repeat Costello’s narrative that she is merely bolstering Philip Morris’s future growth plan product to help Kiwis quit smoking.

Let me be unequivocal - no, she is not.

The evidence has been out on HTP for a long time - and unless we want our health system to cost more, get more burdenened, and for more Kiwis to die, smoking and its variant products should have been killed off.

Not Smoke-Free Generation.

It stinks, and this is not on Costello - it’s the Government around her.

Not to be missed of course last month: Costello telling Health Coalition Aotearoa this government is anti-smoking but not anti-nicotine.

EXTRAS

This incisive comment from Dave P deserves its own place so I am adding it to the post:

Related articles:

Casey Costello releases 'independent' advice on heated tobacco (RNZ)

Vape stores caught selling non-compliant Heated Tobacco Products (RNZ)

Govt set aside $216m to pay for heated tobacco product tax cuts (RNZ)

Contradictions surround Government’s move to slash tax on heated tobacco products (PHCC)

'No evidence' heated tobacco products will help smokers quit – expert (TVNZ)