Government
New Zealand Passes Historic Law; People Born After 2008 Cannot Smoke Cigarettes
By Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
#NewZealand, December 15, 2022 – No one born after 2008 in New Zealand will be able to smoke or buy cigarettes after Parliament passed a historic and sweeping legislation targeted at eradicating one of the country’s leading causes of death.
The Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment law was passed just over a year after it was introduced in December 2021 and institutes a lifetime ban on cigarettes for every generation of Kiwis born on or after Jan 1, 2009.
Smokefree, a health promotions agency in the country, says smoking has fallen to historic lows in the last couple of
British American Tobacco(BAT) New Zealand says in 2019 alone they sold 1.5 billion tailor made cigarettes (TMC) and 449 tonnes of roll-your-own (RYO) tobacco by the three main tobacco companies in New Zealand. The new law comes with a significant economic impact, the tobacco industry makes NZ over $2 billion in taxes alone yearly according to BAT.
The law sought to tackle a number of well-placed and very ambitious goals including:
- To prevent the harmful effect of other people’s smoking on the health of others, and especially on young people and children;
- To significantly reduce the retail availability of smoked tobacco products;
- To prevent young people, and successive generations, from ever taking up smoking; and
- To restrict all forms of advertising and promotion
The law also prohibits vaping or smoking in vehicles carrying children in workplaces, certain public enclosed areas, registered schools, and early childhood education and care centres to expose vulnerable groups to second-hand smoke as little as possible.
It is the first and only law of its kind in the world and if all goes to plan the effects on health in the country will be astronomical.