What is the New Zealand Tobacco Ban?
In the final month of 2021, New Zealand announced that it will ban the sale of tobacco to future generations. This has been brought into effect to hopefully phase out smoking and create a smoke-free nation.
The law will ensure that anyone born after 2008 will never be able to buy cigarettes or tobacco in their lifetime.
The New Zealand government have said, “Our Government’s Smokefree goal is that by 2025 less than five percent of New Zealanders will be smokers.”
What is the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan?
The Smokefree Aotearoa (the current Māori name for New Zealand) was released on 9th December 2021. New Zealand already had a plan in place to create a smoke-free generation however this plan will accelerate the progress. It has been designed to tackle the harm smoked tobacco products can cause the people of New Zealand.
This plan has been designed to help those living in Aotearoa’s most disadvantaged communities.
What are the Main Focus Areas of the Plan?
- Making sure there is Māori leadership and decision-making across all levels of the action plan.
- Funding more health promotion and community activities to motivate and mobilise people across the country to get behind the smoke-free goal and to sign-post support for people on their quit journey.
- Giving people the wrap-around support they need on their quit journey by investing in more tailored help such as a stop smoking service for Pacific communities.
- Making it easier to quit and harder to become addicted by only having low-level nicotine smoked tobacco products for sale and restricting product design features that increase their appeal and addictiveness.
- Making smoked tobacco products harder to buy by reducing the number of shops selling them and kickstarting a smoke-free generation.
- Making sure the tobacco industry and retailers follow the law.
These rules will help to ensure that young people will never have access to cigarettes or harmful tobacco products. This programme is something that the New Zealand government calls “one of the toughest crackdowns on the tobacco industry”.
Essentially, anyone born after 2008 will never be able to buy cigarettes.
A World First!
New Zealand is the first country in the world to begin a tobacco-free generation policy. Although many countries around the world have discussed such efforts, this is the first plan to emerge which has a firm strategy.
The new law is expected to pass in 2022. New Zealand has already started to restrict the number of retailers authorized to sell tobacco products. The levels of nicotine will also be reduced in a lot of products.
Currently, 11% of people over 15 in New Zealand smoke cigarettes. This plan is designed to completely eliminate smoking across the country.
The new rules are expected to half the country’s smoking rates in just 10 years.
Smoking contributes to almost 5,000 deaths a year in New Zealand. This is one of the country’s top causes of preventable death. The plan is expected to save NZ$5 billion (£2.58 billion) on future public health spending.
