New Zealand’s coalition government confirmed the repeal of the tobacco sales ban law will occur as a matter of urgency, allowing the law to be scrapped without seeking public comment. Photo credit: 2happy, CC0 1.0
The New Zealand Parliament commenced the first reading of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill, which aims to revoke the previous government's measures related to controlling tobacco sales, including the generational ban.
The former government set its Smokefree 2025 objective with the aim of reducing smoking rates to below 5% across all population groups. In pursuit of this goal, the previous government implemented the world's first legislation to prohibit tobacco sales to future generations. This legislation involved a 90% reduction in the number of retailers authorized to sell smoked tobacco products, a low nicotine threshold for smoked tobacco products, and the prohibition of sales of smoked tobacco products to individuals born after January 1, 2009.
The current coalition government has proposed an amendment aimed at nullifying all three policies before they are implemented. According to associate minister of health Casey Costello, the previous government failed to recognize the efficacy of prior initiatives in reducing the smoking rate in New Zealand. Results from the New Zealand Health Survey indicate that the current percentage of daily smokers in the country decreased to 6.8%, down from 8.6% the previous year and 16.4% in 2012. Costello emphasized that, even without the additional measures that the coalition government is seeking to repeal, New Zealand is still on track to achieve the Smokefree goal by 2025. In support of the repeal, Costello reiterated that the coalition government is opting for a regulatory approach rather than a prohibitionist one, focusing on providing smokers with adequate support to quit smoking.
"I will soon be taking a package of measures to cabinet to increase the tools available to help people quit smoking," she said.