In December 2022, NZ enacted world-leading tobacco control legislation – essentially creating a whole generation who’ll never be able to buy a pack of cigarettes.
But, with that plan up in smoke – what next?
Tobacco control leaders are meeting in Auckland today and tomorrow to mark the end of Smokefree 2025 and discuss how to continue to bring down rates.
Hāpai te Hauora chief operating officer Jason Alexander told The Front Page that smoking rates for Māori and Pasifika are much higher.
“The last measure we had 14.7% for Māori, that’s the highest. And our Pacific whanau are not far behind, they’re sitting on just over 12.3%,” he said.
Recent figures show there are about 300,000 daily smokers remaining in NZ.
“ It really is a tricky one to quit. If it were easy, then the numbers wouldn’t be this high, the tobacco industry wouldn’t be this large, and we wouldn’t have 5,000 New Zealanders dying from tobacco-related illness every year,” he said.
Alexander said repealing the law that would have banned sales to youths born after 2009 was a “big mistake”.
“Some people flagged the difficulties around putting some of these things through, and I just think it would’ve been worth it. They were aspirational; they were world-leading policies.
“There wasn’t a lot of evidence for them because we were literally the first in the world. We were trying something different, but we were doing it for a good reason because we were trying to get rid of this insidious product,” he said.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
Smoking statistics and targetsTrends and challengesPolicy changes and missed opportunitiesVaping Where to from here?
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the NZ Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
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