ABSTRACT
Tax increases on tobacco products made cigarettes 27 per cent less affordable in real terms between 2006 and 2016. This chapter focuses particularly on Bhutan and Aotearoa/New Zealand – Bhutan for a fascinating history involving the imaginary amalgam of two different substances, opium and tobacco, Aotearoa for its less advanced but equally strong policy intention to be ‘tobacco free’ by 2025. Bhutan is a predominantly Buddhist country sandwiched in the foothills of the Himalayas between China and India. Prohibitions on the sale and use of tobacco were included in its Penal Code in 2004 and were further refined and developed in the Tobacco Control Act which Parliament approved in 2010. In the first decade of the new millennium, the unsavoury post-war metaphor ‘Nicotine Nazis’ shifted to ‘Tobacco Taliban’, particularly in the UK.
