From buying smokes for mum at age 8, to smokefree advocate

Saturday, 7 October 2023

When Teresa Butler’s mother died at 72, her death certificate recorded the cause of death: tobacco smoking.

Butler, 44, feels she contributed to her mother’s life-long addiction. From the age of 8, she regularly bought her mother cigarettes, and kept doing so until 2016 when she started work as a smoking cessation practitioner.

“My mother would give me a $5 note to go down to my local dairy to purchase her cigarettes. So I was a huge contributor to her smoking journey and a factor in her being able to inhale carbon monoxide,” Butler said.

Butler considered herself to have started smoking when she was conceived.

“Mum smoked all her life. She smoked when she was pregnant with me so I’ve always had that carbon monoxide in me.

“Growing up all I saw was everyone smoking around me. It was so visual to us.”

Her mum trained as a nurse and back then smoking was encouraged as a stress relief, Butler said.

When pregnant, her mum and others were told to cut back, but not quit completely because it would “put more stress on the baby”, Butler said.

“It's a generational thing - that’s why it is so important to access support and education for our whānau now.”

Butler started smoking first-hand at 9. She would take a puff as she lit her mum’s cigarette, then hand it over to her. Butler quit seven years ago while pregnant with her daughter.

Her mum was diagnosed at 40 with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but kept smoking.

“As mum got sick it was never really educated to her that it was bad for her. Smoking was her friend and she didn’t want to part with it.”

When Butler started working for Smokefree, she refused to buy her mum cigarettes any more, but her mother continued to smoke until she died two years later.

Butler is now the chairperson of Smokefree Canterbury and worked in smoking cessation at Te Puawaitanga ki Ōtautahi until May this year.

The Ministry of Health recently revealed its plans to reduce the number of businesses allowed to sell tobacco products - from about 6000 to 599 - would leave just 13 in Christchurch.

Dairy and business owner advocates have said retailers are not being given enough time to transition.

“New Zealand is heading towards [becoming] smokefree automatically. It will happen anyway, we don’t not need to kill all these businesses,” said Sunny Kaushal, chairperson of the Dairy and Business Owners’ Group.

However, smokefree advocates, like Butler, say retailers have had enough time to prepare for changes and should care less about profit margin and more about people’s lives.

The Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan was launched in December 2021 and signalled the Government would introduce laws to regulate the tobacco retail market.

“For [dairies] it's all about profit margin and time lines, for us, it's about health and wellbeing and keeping our whānau alive,” Ann Bergman, a smokefree advocate and Māori bowel screening champion for Te Whatu Ora Waitaha Canterbury, said.

Bergman, 71, was diagnosed COPD in 2018 and said it was directly link to smoking when she was younger.

She started at 15 and would have about five smokes a day.

One day when she was 30, she coughed up blood. She thought she had lung cancer and re-evaluated her life while waiting a week for the test results to come back.

She did not have cancer, but it was enough of a scare to make her quit smoking.

She was shocked to be diagnosed with COPD 40 years later.

“My belief in those days were my lungs would recover if you gave up smoking but boy was I wrong.”

About five years ago, she was getting chest infections every three months. The infections then started happening monthly, and then fortnightly.

“The COPD was a trigger for [eosinophilic] asthma, which is a severe adult asthma.”

Her illness limited what she could do, which was hard for the once-active woman to come to terms with.

“I was a a triathlete, a swimmer and a walker. I also dived for kai moana. Now I’m heavily medicated and will be for life.”

Bergman wanted to protect her mokopuna and future generations from what smoking could do, she said.

Butler said when they spoke to communities and asked them why they smoked, the answer they kept hearing was because it’s easy.

“You can go any time of the morning or night and … purchase cigarettes.”

A target of New Zealand’s smokefree plan is to address inequitable smoking rates and poor health outcomes.

There are nearly four times more tobacco retailers in low-income communities - where smoking rates are highest - than there are in higher income communities.

Leitu Tufuga, Smokefree Health Coalition Aotearoa smokefree spokesperson and Hāpai te Hauroa tobacco cessation national manager, said the dairy industry’s business model could be changed.

“Our communities … never asked for tobacco to be sold in dairies. They support their dairies, but they want them to sell products that actually support them.”

She believed the upcoming changes would result in a big uptake in people seeking smokefree support.

“This is a really positive step. It's about ensuring that we have an environment that will support more whānau to quit.

“Smokefree 2025 is just around the corner so … it’s important that we don't put the brakes on.”