New Zealand on Thursday announced plans to prevent young people from ever buying cigarettes, as part of an initiative to make the country completely smoke-free by 2025.
The measures will result in people born after 2008 being unable to buy cigarettes or tobacco products for the rest of their lives, while reducing the nicotine levels in cigarettes available to the elderly.
The number of retailers who can sell cigarettes could also be significantly reduced, officials said. The law is expected to come into force next year.
Health officials and campaign groups have welcomed the move, recognizing the proposed reforms as one of the toughest crackdowns on the tobacco industry in the world.
New Zealand already demands simple packaging and high taxes on cigarettes, but the Ministry of Health says more action is needed to meet the goal of making the country smoke-free.
“This is a historic day for the health of our people,” said Dr. Ayesha Verrall, deputy health minister, in a statement.
“We want to ensure that young people never start smoking, so we make it a criminal offense to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth. People who are 14 years old when the law goes into effect never will can legally buy tobacco. “
According to Verrall, smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in New Zealand, causing one in four cancers in its population of approximately 5 million. The Ministry of Health said smoke-related harm was particularly widespread in Maori, the Pacific and low-income communities.
“A long blow”
First introduced in 2011, the government’s smoke-free goal is to ensure that national smoking rates are reduced to below 5% by 2025 – before smoking is eventually phased out. Around 13% of adults across the country currently smoke, up from 18% almost a decade ago.
However, the current smoking rate among the indigenous Maori population is 31%, much higher than the national rate.
“It’s been a long misery, but it actually looks like we’re going to hit the Smoke Free 2025 goal,” said Robert Beaglehole, chairman and founder of the ASH campaign group.
“This set of complementary measures will be the envy of countries struggling to end the death and misery of smoked tobacco. We will be world leaders in tobacco control,” he added.
The World Health Organization describes the tobacco epidemic as “one of the greatest public health threats the world has ever faced”. It is said that smoking, including secondhand smoke, kills more than 8 million people each year.
More than 80% of the world’s estimated 1.3 billion tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries, which are most exposed to tobacco-related diseases and deaths.
