Pages: About Us - Links - Blog - Why - Event

Welcome to Tear Down the Wall, a website built by kids at Christchurch's Discovery 1 school with the aim of helping to ban Powerwalls in New Zealand.

What are Powerwalls?
"Powerwall" is the tobacco industry's name for large area (usually a wall) in a retail shop displaying tobacco products. Rows of brightly coloured cigarette packets are often on display behind the counter in supermarkets and dairies, located at eye level so that if anyone, including kids, goes into the shop to buy something, when they pay for it they end up looking at a wall full of cigarette packets.

Powerwalls are important to tobacco companies to promote cigarettes now that other forms of tobacco advertising have been banned, and they spend huge amounts of money on the powerwall displays to make them stand out and be eye-catching. We think that Powerwalls are just a sneaky form of tobacco advertising, and because tobacco advertising is illegal in NZ we think Powerwalls should be banned.

What can we do about it?
Parliament is currently looking at the status of Powerwalls and will make a decision about whether or not to ban them. We think Powerwalls should be banned, and we intend to make sure the NZ Government hears what we have to say. What do you think? Click on the link to our Blog and leave your comments!

We want to get lots of links and traffic to this website to get the word out, so please add a link to our site on your site!


We tore down the wall in Cathedral Square!
The Powerwall Event Team went into action on 20 August in Christchurch's Cathedral Square as we did our own media protest event about tobacco displays. We had MPs, politicians, health spokespeople and the media attend - check out our Event page for more info and photos!




We get the attention of the Smokefree Coalition
We did an email campaign to raise awareness of our powerwalls project and Louis, one of our team members, made contact with the New Zealand Smokefree Coalition and they've published a summary of our Tear Down the Wall event in their newsletter of 3 September 2008.

They also wrote about our project in their previous newsletter, where we get mentioned in the 'From the Director's Desk' section and also in the article 'Christchurch Students take on Tobacco Companies'.




Over 3 Kilometres of Tobacco Displays in NZ!
Our video team made this video about tobacco displays in NZ. We filmed it at a racetrack to show how much space in NZ is being taken up by tobacco displays. The video is on YouTube - please link to it and share it with your friends.




Click on the thumbnails to read Lewis' letter about Powerwalls and the Tear Down the Wall event, plus a letter we got from Nanaia Mahuta, the Minister of Youth Affairs.