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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 61

Tobacco

Tobacco.

There has been so much written and said about growing tobacco in the colony that the subject naturally finds a place in this essay, although at present it cannot be said that the attempt to grow and manufacture tobacco has met with very signal success. Yet it seems to have been sufficiently demonstrated that tobacco of the finest quality can be grown in Auckland, and that there is no reason why the whole of the tobacco used in the colony should not be grown in it, unless the revenue steps in and finds, as it did in the distillation of spirits, that the manufacture within the colony entails too great a loss to the revenue. At the present moment the duty on imported tobacco ranks next to that on spirits. The intrinsic worth of the article maybe gathered from the fact that a single acre will produce between 1,500lb. and 1,800lb. weight. The duty at present is 3s. 6d. per pound, and in 1881 the gross amount of duty received was £200,884, which would be about 921,000lb. Of cigars, 69,295lb. were imported, at a duty of 6s., giving a revenue of £21,985, and of cigarettes, 23,311lb., duty 6s., giving £6,310 16s. 8d. New Zealand grew, in 1884, 4,776lb. of tobacco, and manufactured 1,451lb. of cigars and 1,348lb. of cigarettes, the duty on home-grown tobacco being 1s. a pound. The Royal Commission of 1880 reported that the Tobacco Act of 1879 had destroyed the tobacco-growing industry, and that that was the intention of the framers of the Act, and the tendency of the policy recommended by the Customs Department and adopted by the Government. The Commissioners say no compromise is possible, and that, if the Customs revenue is held to be of paramount importance, as it unquestionably is at present, then the growth of tobacco ought to be prohibited, as it practically is by the Act of 1879. If this is still the feeling, there is little use in printing long papers on the growth and cultivation of tobacco. Better far to accept the inevitable, and admit that, for fiscal purposes alone, we must exclude tobacco and distillation from. page 74 the list of our home industries. It will be observed that a few hundred acres would grow all the tobacco at present needed in the colony; that the value of the tobacco is low, were it not for the duty; and that, until we are in a position to export tobacco to new countries, the advantages of growing our own supply may be easily outweighed by the inconveniences arising to the fiscal necessities. It certainly is hard upon the smoker, to whom, perchance, tobacco is the one luxury, that he should have to pay so much for his innocent enjoyment; but he gets off more lightly than the spirit drinker, who has to pay 14s. a gallon, or 2s. 4d. a bottle, on every drop of liquor he consumes. The value in sterling of total imports of tobacco is worthy of notice and comparison with the duty received, omitting shillings and pence:—
Value. Duty.
£ £
Tobacco unmanufactured 1,605 1,940
Tobacco manufactured 64,246 200,884
Cigars 23,119 21,985
Cigarettes 7,910 6,810
£97,880 £231,119

Comparing this with the duty on spirits, brandy to the value of £77,101 produced in duty £103,774. The total value of spirits was £.215,411—duty, £380,326. This is without spirits of wine. The value of the tea imported was £180,301, and the duty (4d.), £73,196. But, although there may be such strong reasons against encouraging the growth of tobacco, these do not weigh equally against the manufacture of the imported leaf; and there are strong hopes of this branch developing into one outlet, at least, for colonial labour, and perhaps favourably affecting the exchanges.