New Zealand - Tobacco Reporter

Kiwi Lawmakers Pass Generational Ban

Lawmakers in New Zealand passed legislation today that makes it illegal to sell tobacco to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2009, reports the South China Morning Post.

“There is no good reason to allow a product to be sold that kills half the people that use it,” Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall told Parliament, adding that New Zealand’s healthcare system would save billions of dollars in the cost of treating sick smokers.

New Zealand’s pioneering law means that the minimum age for buying cigarettes will increase year after year. For example, somebody trying to buy a pack of cigarettes 50 years from now would need to prove they were at least 63 years old.

In addition to its age provision, the law will also cut the number of retailers allowed to sell tobacco by 90 percent and require companies to reduce the level of nicotine in combustible products.

The new legislation is part of New Zealand’s drive to become “smoke-free” by 2025, a situation in which fewer than 5 percent of the population smokes, according to the government definition.

Opponents of the legislation said the bill would force many small corner shops, known in New Zealand as dairies, out of business because they would no longer be able to sell cigarettes. They also predicted it would boost illicit tobacco sales.

“Denying adults the right to buy cigarettes legally will infantilize future generations and could make cigarettes more [and] not less desirable.”

Simon Clark, director, Forest

Smokers’ rights group Forest called the generational tobacco ban “absurd.”

“Banning younger adults from buying cigarettes legally won’t stop people smoking. It will merely drive the sale of cigarettes underground with consumers buying unregulated cigarettes on the black market, like any other prohibited product,” said Forest Director Simon Clark.

“Absurd policies like this are what happens when governments set targets for countries to become smoke-free,” he added. “Denying adults the right to buy cigarettes legally will infantilize future generations and could make cigarettes more [and] not less desirable.”

The share of people in New Zealand who smoke cigarettes daily has dropped to an all-time low of 8 percent, down from 9.4 percent this time last year, the annual NZ Health Survey revealed in November. By comparison, OECD data shows 25 percent of French adults smoked in 2021.

The decline in smoking has been accompanied by a rise in vaping. Some 8.3 percent now use e-cigarettes daily compared with 6 percent 12 months ago.

22nd Century Group, an agricultural biotechnology company that has invested heavily in reduced-nicotine cigarettes, applauded New Zealand’s plan to lower nicotine levels. “This policy is exactly what we were hoping for and more, particularly considering the inclusion of ‘testing variance’ in evaluating nicotine content,” said John D. Pritchard, vice president of regulatory science at 22nd Century, in a statement.

By including testing variance in the maximum permitted nicotine content of smoked tobacco products, New Zealand is compelling cigarette makers to target an average value of approximately 0.5 mg of nicotine per gram of tobacco content, which, according to Pritchard, also happens to be the level achieved by 22nd Century Group’s VLN products.

December 13, 2022

New Zealand Smoking at All-Time Low

The share of people in New Zealand who smoke cigarettes daily has dropped to an all-time low of 8 percent, down from 9.4 percent this time last year, reports The New Zealand Herald, citing figures from the annual NZ Health Survey.

The decline in smoking has been accompanied by a rise in vaping. Some 8.3 percent now use e-cigarettes daily compared with 6 percent 12 months ago.

And while the daily smoking rate for Maori, at 19.9 percent, remains far higher than that for the population at large, this figure, too, is down; one year ago, the Maori smoking rate stood at 22.3 percent.

The Aotearoa Vapers Community Advocacy (AVCA) said the latest numbers are evidence that New Zealand’s tobacco harm reduction (THR) strategy is working.

“New Zealand’s smoking rates are now half of what they were 10 years ago. In the past year alone, the number of people smoking fell by 56,000. That is amazing when you consider the extra stress on people with the pandemic and increasing cost of living,” said AVCA co-founder Nancy Loucas.

AVCA says the government has done well making stop-smoking services more accessible and introducing tailored Maori and Pacific services.

“Other countries have seen a rise in their smoking rates during the Covid lockdowns and restrictions, but New Zealand has once again bucked the trend. That’s because our Ministry of Health and health providers have adopted a THR strategy, transitioning smokers to vaping as a safe and incredibly effective smoking cessation tool,” said Loucas.

“New Zealand is showing the world how to achieve smoke-free. These latest statistics are more proof that countries which adopt a THR approach to public health end up saving a lot of lives,” says Loucas.

November 18, 2022

Kiwi Generational Ban Gets First Reading

A historic smokefree bill to ban smoking for next generation up for first reading in New Zealand, reports the NZ Herald.

Announced last year, the proposed legislation prohibits people born after Jan. 1, 2009, from purchasing tobacco products.

The plan is part of a push to drop daily smoking rates in New Zealand to less than 5 percent across all population groups by 2025. In 2019–2020, it sat at 13.4 percent.

Introduced by the labor party, the legislation already enjoys broad support in Parliament.

The sole voice opposing it outright is the ACT party, with health spokeswoman Brooke Van Velden saying prohibition will only fuel a black market.

Critics say the measure will likely fuel an already growing black market for cigarettes and that more support is needed for people to transition to vaping.

The Ministry of Health acknowledges as much. Its regulatory impact statement says there is already a growing illicit market and that the policy changes were “likely to exacerbate this.”

The government aims to pass the bill by December, meaning that, all going to plan, those aged 14 in 2023 will be banned from purchasing tobacco.

July 26, 2022

CAPHRA Condemns Anti-Vaping Campaign

“By stirring up anti-vaping hysteria, New Zealand’s Asthma and Respiratory Foundation will only send more minors back to smoking and put the country’s decade long Smokefree 2025 ambition in jeopardy,” says Nancy Loucas, executive coordinator of the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA).

Loucas’ comments follow the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation (ARFNZ) launching a video series titled, “Spotlight on Vaping.” The campaign claims New Zealand is experiencing an “epidemic” of youth vaping. Together with the Secondary Principals’ Association of NZ (SPANZ), it also claims over a quarter of students have vaped in the past week.

“What these sensationalized numbers don’t take into account is, if 26 percent of school students had in fact vaped in the past week, many would only be trying it, and secondly, almost all of them would’ve been smoking deadly cigarettes a generation ago,” says Loucas.

CAPHRA says while smoking-related illnesses kill around 5,000 New Zealanders every year, vaping has not reportedly caused one death in the country. In fact, vaping been widely attributed for positively contributing to New Zealand’s plummeting smoking rate. The overall adult daily smoking rate has fallen from 18 percent in 2006/07 to 9.4 percent in 2020-2021.

“What ARFNZ fails to mention is [that] the 2021 ASH Year 10 Snapshot survey that they selectively refer to confirms that vaping is not hooking nonsmokers. In that survey, just 3 percent of those who vape daily have never smoked. What’s more, while many may try it, very few ever become regular vapers, particularly non-smoking students,” she says.

Loucas says while ARFNZ attract headlines by alleging a “youth vaping epidemic,” University of Auckland researchers in 2020 came to a different conclusion: “Our findings do not support the notion of a so-called vaping epidemic in New Zealand or a large youth population dependent on vaping,” the researchers wrote

“While no one wants youth vaping, we are not seeing an ‘epidemic’ as ARFNZ would have the public believe.

June 17, 2022

Kiwi Health Director Urged to Permit Flavors

The attitude and actions of the next director-general of health will be key to New Zealand achieving its smokefree ambitions, says the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA).

“This person could make or break Smokefree 2025. He or she advises the government, oversees regulation, and has the final say on new vape store licences. It’s an incredibly important position when it comes to New Zealand effectively addressing tobacco,” says Nancy Loucas, executive coordinator of the Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Advocates (CAPHRA).

Current Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield will leave the job in July, with his successor yet to be appointed.

Loucas says that while New Zealand’s Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Act 2020 is viewed internationally as relatively progressive, there are some provisions that the next director-general should review.

“The act claims to strike a balance between ensuring vaping products are available to adult smokers while protecting young people. Sanctioning it as an R18 product has helped achieve that. However, banning the most popular flavours from general retail is only stopping adult smokers from quitting deadly tobacco,” she says.

Since August 11, 2021, general retailers such as supermarkets, service stations and convenience stores have been limited to just selling three flavors–mint, menthol and tobacco. Only licenced specialist vape stores can sell a full range of more popular flavours.

“The next Director-General of Health must review this restriction on general retail. By the time he or she takes office, the flavor ban would have run a year and many of us strongly believe it’s hindering not helping New Zealand achieve Smokefree 2025.

“Adult smokers desperate to quit can go to a supermarket and choose any brand of cigarette under the sun, yet they can only choose from three vape flavors. That’s not enabling them to make the best decision for their health nor is it helping New Zealand reduce its smoking rate,” says Loucas.

This person could make or break Smokefree 2025. He or she advises the government, oversees regulation, and has the final say on new vape store licences. It’s an incredibly important position when it comes to New Zealand effectively addressing tobacco.

Nancy Loucas, executive coordiinator, CAPHRA

With youth smoking at a historic low and 9.4 percent of adults now daily smoking, New Zealand’s goal of Smokefree 2025—where 5 percent or less of the general population smoke—is looking increasingly likely to be achieved.

CAPHRA says overall Bloomfield has been a supporter of New Zealand’s Tobacco Harm Reduction public health strategy. This has included approving and promoting messages on the ministry of health’s Vaping Facts website, which headlines “vaping is less harmful than smoking”—an approach that has been heavily supported across New Zealand’s health sector.

Late last year Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall released the government’s Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan.

At the time, CAPHRA and other THR advocates raised concerns that vaping—a 95 percent less harmful alternative and New Zealand’s most effective smoking cessation tool—is largely absent from the government’s reinvigorated approach to stamping out smoking.

“The smokefree action plan makes tobacco less available and less appealing. It fails, however, to fully acknowledge the positive role vaping has played, and will play, in getting Kiwis off the cancer sticks. That’s a worry because we won’t get there without safer nicotine products,” she says.

CAPHRA says top of mind for the next director-general of health is that fact that over 5,000 Kiwis continue to die from smoking-related illnesses every year, and the job to reduce that is by no means done.

“The next director-general of health will need to keep a close eye on whether the government’s vaping regulations and Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan are in fact delivering on their promise. With so many lives at stake, he or she will have no time to waste,” says Nancy Loucas.

April 25, 2022

Study: Nicotine Mandate Could Reduce Smoking

Requiring cigarette manufacturers to significantly reduce the nicotine content of their products could dramatically reduce smoking rates in New Zealand, reports Stuff, citing a new study published in The New Zealand Medical Journal.

In December, New Zealand unveiled an ambitious tobacco control plan that in addition to gradually raising the smoking age until it covers the entire population, includes a reduced nicotine mandate. New Zealand aims to reduce its smoking levels across to below 5 percent of the population by 2025.

Mandating about 95 percent less nicotine in cigarettes could have a “plausible chance” of achieving the Government’s Smokefree 2025 goals, wrote Professor Nick Wilson and colleagues from the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago, Wellington.

Wilson was relaxed about the anticipated uptick in vaping and illicit trade following such a mandate. Vaping is “substantially less harmful” than smoking and New Zealand’s remote location would offer some protection against cigarette smuggling, he noted.

Assuming a full ban on nicotine was implemented on March 1, 2023, Wilson and his colleagues predicted the smoking initiation among 18–24-year-olds would reduce by 75 percent due to the nonaddictive nature of the denicotinised tobacco. That would translate into an annual reduction of about 6,500 smokers.

Among older established smokers, the researchers assume that 33 percent would quit each year in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

Such a “relatively high rate” of quitting could be sustained because low nicotine tobacco is not addictive and the “growing denormalisation of smoking,” according to the researchers.

February 21, 2022

Singapore Studying New Zealand’s Tobacco Plan

Singapore’s health authorities are debating whether to follow in the footsteps of New Zealand by gradually raising the smoking age until it covers the entire population, reports The Straits Times.

On Jan. 8, New Zealand unveiled a plan to phase out smoking through price hikes, nicotine limits and increasing age restrictions, among other measures.

On Jan. 11, Minister of State for Health Koh Poh Koon told Parliament he would look at how New Zealand’s experience could be applicable in Singapore.

Singapore is unlikely to copy New Zealand’s embrace of vaping as an alternative to smoking, however. “If vaping becomes entrenched among the younger generation, it undoes all the progress we made on curbing smoking, and will take an enormous effort over many years to curb its use,” said Koh.

While e-cigarettes are banned in the city state, they are readily available through e-commerce, according to Koh.

Smoking prevalence in Singapore fell from 11.8 percent in 2017 to 10.1 percent in 2020. The city state introduced standardized packaging and enhanced graphic health warnings in 2020 and raised the minimum legal age for smoking from 19 years to 21 years in January 2021.

As a result of such measures, smoking among adults aged 18 to 29 decreased from 9.8 percent in 2017 to 8.8 percent in 2020, according to Koh

Smoking and second-hand smoke exposure accounted for about $180 million of healthcare costs in Singapore in 2019, he noted.

January 12, 2022

New Zealand: Smoking Down More Than Usual

Smoking rates have decreased more than usual, reports NZ Herald, citing a recent government health survey.

In 2020–2021, smoking rates decreased across all ethnic groups. For Maori adults, smoking was down 6.4 percent to 22.3 percent compared to 28.7 percent in 2019/2020.

Deborah Hart, director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), says that the decline is due to the smoke-free initiatives put in place, including plain packaging and taxes on cigarettes.

Vaping rates have increased by 3.5 percent compared to 0.9 percent in 2015/2016. A study by ASH and the University of Auckland showed that daily use of e-cigarettes is occurring overwhelmingly in existing smokers.

“What we’re seeing is people transition from very harmful cigarette smoking to a much less harmful product in e-cigarettes or vaping, and that’s been going on for a few years, and we’re going to continue to see that, I would think,” Hart said.

Youth smoking is down 8.1 percent from 12.9 percent the previous year, according to the study.

January 5, 2022

Tag: New Zealand