New Zealand Bans Cigarette Sales for Next Generations

New Zealand will ban the sale of tobacco to its next generation in a bid to end smoking.

Anyone born after 2008 will not be able to purchase cigarettes or tobacco products for their entire lifetime. The ban is contained in a law that is expected to be enacted next year.

“We want to ensure that young people never start smoking,” said the country’s Health Minister, Ayesha Verall.

The measure is part of a broad repression of smoking announced by the Ministry of Health of New Zealand on Thursday (9).

Doctors and other health experts in the country welcomed the unprecedented reforms that will reduce access to tobacco and restrict the levels of nicotine in cigarettes.

“This will help people stop smoking or switch to less harmful products and make it much less likely that young people will become addicted to nicotine,” says Professor Janet Hook of the University of Otago.

New Zealand is set to reach a national target of reducing its smoking rate to 5% by 2025, with the goal of eventually eliminating it altogether.

Currently, about 13% of New Zealand adults smoke, compared to 18% nearly a decade ago. But the rate is much higher — about 31% — among the indigenous Maori population, who also suffer a higher rate of illness and death.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health says that smoking causes one in four cancers reported in the country and remains the leading cause of preventable death for its population of 5 million people. The sector has been targeted by lawmakers for over a decade.

As part of the crackdown announced on Thursday, the government has also introduced major controls on tobacco, including a significant restriction on where cigarettes can be sold, whether in supermarkets or grocery stores.

The number of stores authorized to sell cigarettes will be drastically reduced from about 8,000 to less than 500, officials say.

In recent years, vaping — electronic cigarettes that produce a vapor that also releases nicotine — has become much more popular than traditional cigarettes among younger generations.

New Zealand health authorities caution, however, that vaping is not harmless. Researchers have also found dangerous carcinogens in e-cigarette liquids. But in 2017, the country adopted vaping as a way to help smokers stop smoking.