New Zealand is heading”towards a tobacco-free future”. The New Zealand Parliament adopted on Tuesday a text aimed atgradually and almost completely ban tobaccowhich kills nearly 8 million people worldwide each year.
Named “Tobacco-free environment“, the text will thus prevent people born in 2009 or later to buy cigarettes legally. The amount of nicotine in products still available for sale will be reduced and the legal smoking age will be raised each year.
“Thousands of people will live longer and healthier lives, and the health system will benefit from NZ$5 billion (i.e. the equivalent of 3 billion euros) by not having to deal with diseases caused by smoking, such as many types of cancer, heart attacks, strokes and amputations”indicated the Minister Delegate for Health Ayesha Verrall, at the origin of this anti-tobacco law.
In New Zealand, the rate of smokers is already relatively low, around 8%. The purpose of the text is to reduce this rate to less than 5% by 2025. By way of comparison, in mainland France 31.9% of people aged 18 to 75 said they smoked in 2021, and 25.3% said they smoked daily. A figure that has been increasing since 2019, after several consecutive years of decline.
A reduction of almost 95% in the number of sellers
Other measures will be put in place after the adoption of this text, including the division by 10 of the number of sellers authorized to sell tobacco, in particular to make cigarettes more difficult to obtain: currently more than 6,000 in the territory New Zealanders, they will be reduced to 600, a reduction of almost 95%.
The amount of nicotine is also going to be “reduced to non-addictive levels“, adds Ayesha Verrall. “The effectiveness of denicotinization is well proven in clinical trials“, she adds in an article in the magazine Science. However, no measure concerns vaping devices.
While critics of this text believe that the measures will fuel an underground and illegal market or criminalize smokers, New Zealand becomes, with the adoption of this text, one of the countries with an anti-tobacco law among the most stringent in the world. It is nevertheless at the forefront of the fight against tobacco: it had already been the first country to ban smoking in indoor workplaces in 1990, and in bars and restaurants in 2004. Since 2010, taxes on cigarettes increased by almost 165% and a packet today costs NZ$35s, the equivalent of 21 euros.
In the world, only one country, Bhutan, has completely banned the purchase of cigarettes.
Source :
- THE FINAL PUFF? New Zealand’s public health officials have drawn on a decade of research to craft a plan to make the country smoke-free, ScienceDecember 9, 2022
