Thu 09 December 2021:
New Zealand is proposing one of the world’s toughest anti-tobacco crackdowns, prohibiting young people from ever purchasing cigarettes in their lives, reasoning that other measures to eliminate smoking were taking too long.
“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,” said New Zealand Associate Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall in a statement on Thursday.
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.”
In the next months, the government will engage with a Maori health task force before introducing legislation in parliament in June of next year, with the goal of passing it by the end of 2022.
When the rule takes effect in 2027, those under the age of 14 will no longer be able to legally purchase cigarettes in the five-million-strong Pacific nation, and the amount of nicotine in all cigaretttes on the market will be reduced.
The measures were “untested, unproven, and without any scientific evidence of effectiveness,” according to British American Tobacco New Zealand.
“The combined impacts are effectively a gradual prohibition, which simply pushes supply underground to the black market,” it said in a statement.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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