New Zealand will ban the sale of cigarettes to future generations by Reuters

(Reuters) – New Zealand plans to ban young people from buying cigarettes in their lifetime in a crackdown on the tobacco industry, arguing that other efforts to quit smoking are taking too long.

In 2027, people under the age of 14 will never be able to buy cigarettes in a five-million-dollar country in the Pacific Ocean, part of the proposals put forward on Thursday, which will also reduce the number of traders allowed to sell tobacco and reduce nicotine levels.

“We want to make sure that young people never start smoking, so we consider it a crime to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new groups of young people,” New Zealand Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said in a statement.

“If nothing changes, it will be decades before the Maori smoking rate falls below 5%, and this government is not ready to leave the people behind.”

Today, 11.6% of all New Zealanders over the age of 15 smoke, and the proportion rises to 29% among indigenous Maori adults, according to government data.

The government will hold a consultation with a Maori health group in the coming months before the legislation enters parliament in June next year, with the aim of enacting a law by the end of 2022.

Then the restrictions would be expanded in stages from 2024 onwards, starting to significantly reduce the number of authorized vendors, reducing nicotine requirements in 2025 and creating a “smoke-free” generation from 2027 onwards.

The package will make New Zealand’s retail tobacco industry one of the most restricted in the world, following the ban on cigarette sales in Bhutan. A neighbor of New Zealand, Australia was the first country in 2012 to pack cigarettes.

The New Zealand government said the existing measures had slowed down tobacco consumption and sales taxes, but said that more drastic steps were needed by 2025 to achieve the goal of burning less than 5% of the population every day by 2025.

The new rules would halve the country’s smoking rate by 10 years from its entry into force, the government said.

Smoking kills around 5,000 people a year in New Zealand, and is one of the leading causes of death in the country. Four out of five smokers started before the age of 18, the country’s government said.

“WAVE OF CRIME”

Health officials welcomed the crackdown, expressed concern about the impact traders are having on their businesses, and warned of the emergence of the black market.

The government did not specify how the new rules would be policeed or how they would be applied to visitors to the country.

“Smoking cigarettes kills 14 New Zealanders every day and two out of three smokers will die as a result of smoking,” New Zealand Medical Association President Alistair Humphrey said in a statement.

“This action plan provides a hope to meet the 2025 Smoke Free Aotearoa goal and keep our tamariki (Maori children) from burning.”

However, the Dairy and Business Owners Group, a local store lobby group known as Dairy in New Zealand, said that while it supported a smoke-free country, the government’s plans would destroy many businesses.

“All of this is 100 percent theory and zero percent substance,” Sunny Kaushal, the group’s chairman, told Stuff.co.nz. “There will be a wave of climate. Gangs and criminals will fill the gap with cigarette houses, along with tinnie houses.”