It might be called an appetizer. New Zealand Ministry of Health website published on November 29, on its page devoted to the effects of tobacco on health, a text recalling that“About 5,000 people [sur une population d’environ 4,8 millions d’habitants] die every year in New Zealand from smoking or secondhand smoke. This represents 13 people per day. It is not too late to quit smoking ”. Smoking, the cause of one in four cancers, remains the leading cause of preventable death in New Zealand.
On Thursday 9 December, Ayesha Verrall, the New Zealand Minister of Health unveiled “Smokefree 2025”, a plan to gradually raise the legal age for buying tobacco, a “World premiere”. Current regulations prohibit the sale of cigarettes to New Zealanders under the age of 18. But, from 2027, this age limit will increase by one year each year, the nicotine level of cigarettes will be gradually reduced as well as the number of tobacco shops. The goal is that by 2025 less than 5% of New Zealanders smoke. This target was established in March 2011 in response to the recommendations of a parliamentary report conducted by the Maori affairs committee, which planned to “Make New Zealand a tobacco-free country by 2025”.
According to the New Zealand government, measures that have existed until then, such as plain packaging and taxes on cigarette sales, have slowed tobacco consumption, but remain insufficient for the country to meet its target. ten years ago. In one press release published Thursday, Mme Verrall summarizes :
“We want to make sure that young people never start smoking, so we are going to criminalize the sale or supply of tobacco products (…). We are also reducing the attractiveness, dependence and availability (…) of tobacco. “
New Zealand is taking a historic step towards our smokefree future. We will implement bold measures, including ba… https://t.co/GebLuGaLhe
This plan that was announced in April 2021 will have to be passed by Parliament, where the Labor Party has a majority. Over the next few months, the government will consult with a task force on Maori health before tabling a bill in parliament next June, with the goal of seeing the bill passed by the end of 2022.
Convince part of the population
Because the authorities have yet to convince part of the population. The rate of smoking has decreased over time, going between 2006-2007 and 2019-2020 from 17% to 10.1% for populations of European origin, from 39.2% to 28.7% among Maori populations, and from 24.8% to 18, 3% among Pasifika (Polynesians). “If nothing changes, it will take decades for the Maori smoking rate to drop below 5%”, explains the Minister of Health in her press release.
The pressure group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) welcomed these announcements and recalled that“Currently 387,000 New Zealanders smoke daily. The majority of them are between 25 and 54 years old. To reach the “Smokefree 2025” target, at least 40,000 people must quit smoking each year. Two thirds of all smokers who quit are among the Maori or Polynesians ”.
Fight against trafficking
With these measures, New Zealand’s tobacco industry would become one of the most regulated in the world, just behind Bhutan, where the sale of cigarettes is completely banned. Australia, a neighbor of New Zealand, was the first country in the world to impose plain packaging on cigarette packages in 2012.
For its part, the tobacco manufacturer British American Tobacco New Zealand believes that these measures are “Untested, unfounded and without any scientific proof of their effectiveness”. “The consequences are in fact a progressive ban, which only encourages the sale [de tabac] on the black market ”, says the company. A problem whose New Zealand authorities are aware. They wrote, in April 2021: “The amount of tobacco products smuggled into New Zealand has increased dramatically in recent years and (…) organized criminal groups are involved (…) in large scale. “