-
A normal cigarette - Source: ONE News -
Related
Anti-smoking groups will meet in Wellington on Monday as part of their continuing campaign to make New Zealand smoke free by 2020.
The Smokefree Coalition is holding the seminar to encourage submissions to parliamentary inquiry into smoking to be held next year.
The Maori affairs select committee is inquiry into the tobacco industry and the consequences of tobacco use for Maori with written submissions due by January 29 and public hearings beginning in February.
The coalition's director, Prudence Stone, was confident the MPs would back their calls to end smoking in New Zealand.
"With our background research and recommendations, we know New Zealand can be smoke free by 2020," Dr Stone says.
"We must now hand that confidence over to the select committee, so that they share that confidence when they hand those recommendations on to government."
Another member of the coalition, Te Reo Marama director Shane Bradbrook, said the industry would face tough questions at the inquiry about their marketing and the misery that tobacco caused.
The coalition said New Zealand could be smoke free by 2020 through legislation addressing supply and demand, and tobacco marketing.
