Tobacco: New Zealand abandons plan to ban tobacco sales to people born after 2008

Goodbye, a tobacco-free generation. The New Zealand government announced on Saturday it was scrapping a national plan that would have banned the sale of cigarettes to people born after 2008 from July 2024, the BBC reported.

The measure was supported by Jacinda Ardern’s Labor government, but the new centre-right Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who takes office this Monday, has been reluctant to pursue it.

Rejection in favor of tax cuts

New Finance Minister Nicola Willis explained that legislative changes will be made before March. Revenue from cigarette sales will allow the government to offset tax cuts. During the election campaign, Christopher Luxon’s National Party did not announce any intention to abandon the No Smoking Plan, although the man publicly expressed concerns about the emergence of a “black market” in tobacco if a ban were to occur.

Tobacco is the leading cause of “preventable deaths” in New Zealand and the plan was aimed at stopping younger generations from picking up the smoking habit. The various measures, which also included reducing nicotine levels in cigarettes sold, were expected to prevent 5,000 deaths a year in the country of just over 5 million people. This would allow New Zealand to become the first tobacco-free country.

“We are shocked and outraged”

This sudden change of heart has caused much unrest among scientists who have been working in favor of the measure for several years: “We are alarmed and outraged. This is an incredibly retrograde measure in the face of absolutely excellent, world-leading public health measures,” Professor Richard Edwards, a tobacco control researcher and public health expert at the University of Otago, said in a statement.

The head of the New Zealand Health Coalition, Lisa Te Morenga, said abandoning the plan would cost thousands of lives and that Māori would suffer the most, the New Zealand Herald notes. According to this specialist, the plan would save the national health system over 20 years 1.3 billion New Zealand dollars, that is, approximately 720 million euros.

New Zealand’s anti-smoking plan has even been copied in the UK, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak introducing similar provisions in the autumn.