Will New Zealand’s Plan to Ban Cigarettes Work?
Via Unsplash.
On December 13, 2022, New Zealand announced the beginning of their plan to gradually eliminate cigarettes for their whole population, banning people that were born from January 1, 2009 and later from purchasing cigarettes. For those who can already smoke, New Zealand plans on raising the legal smoking age gradually over time until it applies to everyone.
In addition to the cigarette ban, New Zealand’s Associative Health Minister Ayesha Verrall also added new rules to the already standing legal age-of-18 law to make smoking less appealing and harder to access. First of all, the government has reduced the number of retailers that are authorized to sell cigarettes from 6,000 to 600. Cigarettes are now only sold in government-authorized stores, rather than corner stores or supermarkets. If retailers are caught selling cigarettes to anyone underage, they can receive a fine of up to $150,000 New Zealand dollars, or roughly $96,000 USD. Secondly, they have dramatically decreased the amount of nicotine that is allowed to go into the standard cigarette. The lower amount of nicotine can make smoking less appealing, as it reduces the enjoyment that can cause addiction, leading to people willingly quitting smoking. These rules by themselves have the potential to make New Zealand smoke-free by 2025, according to Verrall. Making cigarettes harder to buy and scarcer will make cigarettes less addicting, ideally resulting in New Zealanders kicking their smoking habit on their own.
This set of regulations will reduce economic and health issues caused by smoking. “Thousands of people will live longer, healthier lives and the health system will be $5 billion better off from not needing to treat the illnesses caused by smoking, such as numerous types of cancer, heart attacks, strokes, amputations,” said Verrall, whose aim is to make sure that future generations don’t even have the chance to smoke in the first place, so that addictions do not occur and illnesses will reduce greatly. Having the chance to legally purchase cigarettes makes smoking more accessible, causing more addictions. The negative health effects of long-term smoking become more destructive over time, and withdrawal takes long amounts of time and lots of effort to achieve. These laws have the potential to improve the quality of life of thousands of smokers and potential smokers, not to mention the health of those who are exposed to secondhand smoke.
These new laws will compound New Zealand’s pre-existing laws regulating smoking, which have already achieved outstanding results on their own. According to a report on November 17, 2022 from the Health Ministry, around 8% of the population smoke daily compared to 16% ten years ago, meaning that half of the smokers in the country have reduced or quit smoking entirely. Not only that, around 56,000 people have been reported to quit combustible cigarettes in a year. As a result, there is reason to believe that New Zealand’s new smoking restrictions will build on previous success.
However, New Zealand fears that adding a new act to ban cigarettes to the already effective laws can bring other major issues. Experts have hypothesized that the drastic change of completely banning cigarettes will push people into illegally purchasing cigarettes from the black market. This could lead to higher rates of smuggling and it could pressure New Zealand into controlling its borders to make sure there aren't any illegal imports. The country would have to keep track of the people who smoke in the country and the imports that create the transactions of cigarettes by increasing surveillance, an effort that could be worse for both the country and its citizens.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the only negative effect that may be seen from New Zealand’s new plan, as New Zealand’s cigarette bans do not apply to e-cigarettes, or vapes. The number of people who vape daily has increased by more than eight times in a span of six years. Six years ago, less than 1% of people were reported to have vaped; however, today, around 8.3% of people have said that they vape on a daily basis. So despite smoking rates going down, vaping rates are increasing at a much faster rate. Although vaping is seen as safer, it is still a danger in causing several illnesses and is not nicotine-free as it is essentially heated nicotine. In February 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States confirmed 2,807 cases of e-cigarette or vaping use-associated lung injury and 68 deaths attributed to that condition. With vaping becoming the new replacement to smoking, it is unclear how New Zealand’s smoking ban will affect the use of e-cigarettes.
Overall, while New Zealand is making large strides in public health through its cigarette ban, it must be concerned about the potential consequences, especially as they relate to vaping and smuggling. It is of the utmost importance that these issues are addressed in a timely manner, lest they become as problematic as smoking itself.