The New Zealand government announced Thursday that it would ban the sale of cigarettes for future generations to reach its smoke-free 2025 implementation plan.
The Cabinet paper highlights that cigarette smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death in New Zealand, causing between 4,500 and 5,000 deaths each year. Smoking-related harm disproportionately impacts Maori, Pacific and low-income communities.
The new legislation will mean that the legal smoking age will increase every year so that people aged 14 when the law comes into effect will never be able to legally purchase tobacco.
Associate health minister Dr. Ayesha Verrall stated, “This is a historic day for the health of our people . . . we want to make sure young people never start smoking so we will make it an offence to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth.”
She also acknowledged that the legislation is part of a plan that focuses on the disproportionate impact on New Zealand’s indigenous Maori population. Dr. Verrall stated that “while smoking rates are heading in the right direction, we need to do more, faster to reach our goal. If nothing changes, it would be decades till Māori smoking rates fall below 5 percent, and this Government is not prepared to leave people behind.”
The rising age to legally buy tobacco comes alongside other measures to make smoking unaffordable and inaccessible in New Zealand, including reducing the legal amount of nicotine in tobacco products, cutting down the shops where cigarettes can legally be sold, and increasing funding to addiction services.
