New Zealand to ban cigarette sales for future generations
New Zealand plans to ban young people from ever buying cigarettes in their
lifetime in one
of the world's toughest crackdowns on the tobacco industry, arguing that other efforts to
extinguish smoking were taking too long. People aged 14 and under in 2027
will never be
allowed to purchase cigarettes in the Pacific country of 5 million, part
of proposals unveiled
on Dec 9, 2021, that will also curb the number of retailers authorised
to sell tobacco and
cut nicotine levels in all products. "We want to make sure young people never start smoking
so we will make it an offence to sell or supply smoked tobacco products
to new cohorts of
youth," New Zealand Associate Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall said
in a statement.
"If nothing changes, it would be decades till Maori smoking rates fall below 5%, and this
government is not prepared to leave people behind." Currently, 11.6%
of all New Zealanders
aged over 15 smoke, a proportion that rises to 29% among indigenous Maori
adults, according
to government figures. The government will consult with a Maori health task force in the coming
months before introducing legislation into parliament in June next year,
with the aim of making
it law by the end of 2022. The restrictions would then be rolled out in
stages from 2024,
beginning with a sharp reduction in the number of authorised sellers, followed by reduced
nicotine requirements in 2025 and the creation of the "smoke-free"
generation from 2027.
The package of measures will make New Zealand's retail tobacco industry one of the most restricted
in the world, just behind Bhutan where cigarette sales are banned outright.
New Zealand's neighbour
Australia was the first country in the world to mandate plain packaging
of cigarettes in 2012.
The New Zealand government said while existing measures like plain packaging and levies on sales
had slowed tobacco consumption, the tougher steps were necessary to achieve
its goal of fewer than
5% of the population smoking daily by 2025. The new rules would halve the
country's smoking rates
in as few as 10 years from when they take effect, the government said.
The United Kingdom has set goals to go smoke-free by 2030 while Canada
and Sweden have targets
to bring down smoking prevalence to less than 5% of their populations.
"All these aggressive targets
are being introduced, yet, to date, we have still to see any country implement a coherent strategy
likely to achieve a tobacco end-game.
New Zealand is a very small market," he said. Smoking kills about
5,000 people a year in New Zealand,
making it one of the country's top causes of preventable death. Four in five smokers started before
age 18, the country's government said. Vaping, often seen as a safer alternative
to smoking and
a useful aid to quitting, is also tightly regulated with sales only allowed to over 18s. Black market could
emerge health authorities welcomed the crackdown, while retailers and tobacco
companies expressed
concern about the impact on their businesses and warned of the emergence
of a black market.
The government did not detail how the new rules would be policed or whether
they would apply to visitors
to the country. "Cigarette smoking kills 14 New Zealanders every day and two out of three smokers will
die as a result of smoking," said New Zealand Medical Association
chair Alistair Humphrey in a statement.
However, the Dairy and Business Owners Group, a lobby group for local convenience
stores, said while
it supported a smoke-free country, the government's plan would destroy
many businesses.
Source: Dec 9, 2021 (Reuters)
 Tobacco packages sold in 2007 in NZ
たばこ販売禁止へ 2027年から段階的に
New Zealand plans to phase out tobacco sales
New Zealand announced plans December 9, 2021, to effectively ban smoking
by progressively lifting the age
at which tobacco products can be bought, in a world-first bid that means
today's young teens will never be
able to buy cigarettes legally. New Zealand currently outlaws tobacco sales to under-18s and Associate Health
Minister Ayesha Verrall said that from 2027, the age ban would increase
by one year annually to keep the cohort
smoke free. We want to make sure people never start smoking... as they
age, they and future generations will
never be able to legally purchase tobacco, because the truth is there is no safe age to start smoking, she said.
She added that the government would also legislate to restrict where tobacco
is sold and only allow products
with low nicotine levels into the market, to reduce the prospects of people
becoming addicted. Verrall said
the measures maintained New Zealand's role as a global trailblazer in restricting tobacco, with actions such as
banning cigarette sponsorship of sports in 1990 and banning smoking from
bars in 2004.
This is a historic day for the health of our people, she said. Smoking
is still the leading cause of preventable
death in New Zealand and causes one in four cancers. She said the health toll was particularly heavy on Maori
and Pacific communities, where smoking rates are around double the 13.5
percent recorded in the rest of
the population. The government aims to reduce that to five percent by 2025
and estimates achieving the goal
would save the health system NZ$5.5 (US$3.6 billion) in future expenditure. Lobby group Action on Smoking
and Health said the planned changes meant that was now a realistic prospect,
hailing the government for
challenging Big Tobacco. This collection of complementary measures will
be the envy of countries struggling
to combat the death and misery caused by smoked tobacco, ASH chairman Robert Beaglehole said. We will
lead the world in tobacco control. British American Tobacco New Zealand
said the measures were untested,
unproven and without any scientific evidence of effectiveness. The combined
impacts are effectively a gradual
prohibition, which simply pushes supply underground to the black market,
it said in a statement.
Source: AFP 時事通信 2021/12/10
New Zealand
 South Island of New Zealand Christchurch airport Maruia Springs Lake Wanaka Lake Te Anau
Milford Sound and Queenstown Tour from Christchurch Auckland airport
Preserved NZ railway Duneden Railway Station Christcharch Tramway
Tranz Scenic Alpine Tranz Scienic Costal
 2027年から段階的に たばこ販売禁止へ
2021年12月執筆
執筆 医学博士 宮本順伯
★This Web site is link-free.
This information was provided by the Smokefree Hotel and Travel.
The article was written in December 2021,
by Junhaku Miyamoto, M.D., PhD.
Copyright (C) 2021 Junhaku Miyamoto, PhD. All right is reserved.
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