Monitoring, evaluation and review
The Ministry of Health has an ongoing evaluation process to measure the impact of tobacco excise and other smoking cessation policies.
The Ministry has commissioned a preliminary evaluation of:
- the recent excise increases' impact on tobacco consumption and smoking prevalence;
- the effectiveness of New Zealand's excise increases compared to those elsewhere (e.g. comparing different tax designs and levels of increase); and
- what other environmental factors have affected consumption and smoking rates.
This will need to be adapted to include evaluation of the proposed excise increases. The proposals are expected to have an immediate impact on smoking prevalence and tobacco consumption. The impacts on health status and any reduction in costs to the health system will take longer to track and will be the subject of ongoing research by the Ministry and academic institutes.
The effectiveness of the policy proposal in achieving government's fiscal objectives will be measured by comparison of achieved and expected revenue.
