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.
Tobacco is an annual or bi-annual growing 1-3 meters tall with large sticky leaves that contain nicotine. Native to the Americas, tobacco has a long history of use as a shamanic inebriant and stimulant. It is extremely popular and well-known for its addictive potential.
Nicotiana rustica leaves.
Nicotiana rustica leaves have a nicotine content as high as 9%, whereas Nicotiana tabacum (common tobacco) leaves contain about 1 to 3%
A cigar is a tightly rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco which is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Sumatra, Philippines, and the Eastern United States.
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the fresh leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as an organic pesticide, and in the form of nicotine tartrate it is used in some medicines. In consumption it may be in the form of cigarettes smoking, snuffing, chewing, dipping tobacco, or snus.
