The government of New Zealand has unveiled plans to ban young people from ever buying cigarettes in their lifetime in one of the world’s toughest crackdowns on the tobacco industry, arguing that other efforts to extinguish smoking were taking too long.
Part of the proposal, which was obtained by newsmen showed that people aged 14 and under in 2027 will never be allowed to purchase cigarettes in the Pacific country of 5 million, it also plans to curb the number of retailers authorised to sell tobacco and cut nicotine levels in all products.
In a statement, New Zealand Associate Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall said “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”.
“If nothing changes, it would be decades till Maori smoking rates fall below 5%, and this government is not prepared to leave people behind.”
According to government figures, currently, 11.6% of all New Zealanders aged over 15 smoke, a proportion that rises to 29% among indigenous Maori adults.
It was also stated that the government will consult with a Maori health task force in the coming months before introducing the legislation into parliament in June next year, with the aim of making it law by the end of 2022.
Afterwards, the restrictions would then be rolled out in stages from 2024, beginning with a sharp reduction in the number of authorised sellers, followed by reduced nicotine requirements in 2025 and the creation of the “smoke-free” generation from 2027.
It should be noted that the development, if implemented, will make New Zealand’s retail tobacco industry one of the most restricted in the world, just behind Bhutan where cigarette sales are banned outright. New Zealand’s neighbour Australia was the first country in the world to mandate plain packaging of cigarettes in 2012.
Delineating on the development, the New Zealand government said while existing measures like plain packaging and levies on sales had slowed tobacco consumption, the tougher steps were necessary to achieve its goal of fewer than 5% of the population smoking daily by 2025.
The government said the new rules would halve the country’s smoking rates in as few as 10 years from when they take effect.
