Smoking in New Zealand
In New Zealand, smoking is legal but subject to tobacco control regulations. Cigarettes are regulated as tobacco products and can be sold through retail outlets, including online sales and vending machines. The importation of cigarettes for trade is allowed with a trade license. Health warnings on packaging are mandatory, the legal minimum age for purchase is 18 years, and smoking in public places is subject to legal restrictions. A comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising is also in place. Cigarettes in New Zealand are taxed at a total rate of 82.78%, including an excise component of 69.74%. Data show that in 2024, the number of current smokers was recorded to be approximately 364,000 in New Zealand, corresponding to an adult smoking prevalence of 8.6%. In the same year, current smoking prevalence was slightly higher among males (9.7%) than among females (7.7%). In 2022, this prevalence was recorded to be 11.4%. In 2023, the adult daily tobacco smoking prevalence was reported to be 7.7%, with approximately 362,845 daily smokers. In 2021, smoking led to approximately 3,580 deaths in New Zealand, including 2,085 deaths among males and 1,495 deaths among females. In other words, tobacco smoking accounted for 10.38% of all deaths in the country in 2021, including11.78% of all male deaths and 8.9% of all female deaths.
Read articles from New Zealand
September 24, 2021 by vapingpost.com
Kiwi Expert: Low Nicotine Cigs Will Just Make Smokers Consume More
ACT Social Development and Children spokesperson Karen Chhou, said that having only low nicotine cigarettes available on the market only pushes smokers to consume more and therefore spend more on their habit, also leading to an increase in poverty. As part of the proposals put forward by the Kiwi government aiming to make New Zealand Smokefree by 2025, the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Bill, limits the amount of nicotine in e-cigarettes to 20 mg/mL and 50 mg/mL for freebase nicotine, whilst setting the local tobacco age limit at 18.
September 15, 2021 by odt.co.nz
World-leading action plan on smoking will reduce harm
Public health practitioners are used to frustration and disappointment. Until recently, calls to introduce evidence-based interventions to improve health, such as sugary drink taxes and controls on alcohol marketing, have been mostly ignored or have foundered due to political timidity in the face of lobbying by powerful vested interests. Public health gains have mostly been modest and infrequent.
However, it seems the times may be changing. [...] Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall has proposed a plan to achieve the Smokefree Aotearoa goal of having minimal numbers of New Zealanders smoking by 2025. [...]
September 01, 2021 by filtermag.org
As New Zealand Cigarette Taxes Climb, So Do Harms to Poor and Indigenous Smokers
When it comes to taxing cigarettes, there’s rarely any opposition from lawmakers. “Sin taxes,” as they’re sometimes called, raise significant revenue for governments and are broadly deployed in the name of reducing rates of smoking—in the US, they’re particularly high in states like New York and Connecticut. But rarely is the effect of these taxes studied on marginalized people with low incomes, who around the world smoke at the highest rates.
June 30, 2021 by thespinoff.co.nz
Achieving Smokefree 2025 goal will be costly. The alternative is much costlier
We have had the 2025 goal since 2011 but are not currently on track. A boost in funding and commitment is required, writes public health expert Robert Beaglehole.
Colin still haunts me. He was the first hospital patient I talked with as a young medical student in Dunedin in 1965. He was coughing blood from lung cancer caused by his long history of cigarette smoking. I was shocked and powerless; treatment of advanced lung cancer, then as now, is mainly palliative. Along with many other personal experiences of the uniquely harmful effects of cigarettes, my passion for a smokefree country led to the formation of ASH, Action for Smoking and Health, in 1982.
June 18, 2021 by nzherald.co.nz
Cigarette poverty: Kiwi smokers reusing 'horrible' tobacco as prices soar
New Zealand's war on tobacco and its ill-fated smoke-free goal for 2025 is causing poorer Kiwi smokers more harm than good.
With the country's tobacco prices second only to Australia's as the most expensive in the world, the most vulnerable in society are resorting to reusing tobacco that has already been smoked.
As most reused tobacco is left at the very end of the cigarette, it will have already been contaminated further by the toxins in the smoke that attach to the unsmoked tobacco.
June 14, 2021 by scoop.co.nz
NZ Should Move To Low Nicotine Cigarettes, BiotechNZ Says
The Ministry of Health’s move toward a smoke free Aotearoa by 2025, genetic engineering and genetic technologies for low nicotine cigarettes could play a major part in ensuring the success a leading biotech expert says.
Government set a goal in 2011 for less than five percent of New Zealanders to be smokers by 2025. Nearly 85 percent of New Zealanders are currently smoke free. Several techniques are mentioned in the ministry’s 2025 smoke free Aotearoa action plan. But only genetic engineering and technologies provide a means to produce very low nicotine tobacco at the scale needed to break nicotine's addictive cycle, [...] Dr Zahra Champion says.
June 08, 2021 by rnz.co.nz
How vaping can be a smokefree weapon
Over the past few months a spate of high school principals in New Zealand have spoken out about a hazy, sickly-sweet 'epidemic' emerging in their schools: vaping, or e-cigarettes. Vaping is held up by anti-smoking advocates as a game-changer in helping people addicted to tobacco wean themselves off it.
And while statistics show smoking is on the decline throughout New Zealand, there is evidence that vaping is enjoying an ascendency.
May 31, 2021 by scoop.co.nz
Are The Flavours Added To E-cigarettes Safe?
University of Otago food scientists have received an Explorer Grant from the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) to develop novel testing methods that will enable regulatory bodies in New Zealand to evaluate the unknown safety and long-term health effects of flavours commonly added to the liquids used in e-cigarettes.
Lead researcher Dr Graham Eyres, who has significant experience researching flavours used in the food industry, says the flavourings added to the liquids used with e-cigarettes or vaping devices are currently regulated under the Food Standards Code. [...]
May 27, 2021 by tvnz.co.nz
Vaping, e-cigarettes not going to be healthy in long-term, researcher warns as teen use rises
In 2019, a survey of 30,000 year 10 students found more than a third had tried e-cigarettes, with three per cent saying they vaped daily — higher than the rate who consider themselves regular smokers.
As of earlier this month, no vaping signs must now be displayed in schools, kura, ECEs and kōhanga reo.
Hobsonville Point School principal Maurie Abraham says it’s harder to deter teenagers from vaping because it’s widely considered to be less harmful than cigarettes.
“I think we’ve been winning the battle with cigarette smoking with teenagers over the years,” he said.
May 13, 2021 by scoop.co.nz
Is Vaping The Way To A Smokefree Aotearoa?
E-cigarettes made their debut in the early 2000s as a potential cessation device or an alternative to cigarette products. Almost twenty years later, the long term effects of e-cigarettes are still unknown.
In 2011, the New Zealand Government set a goal to be Smoke-free by 2025 and just last month it released a discussion document on Proposals For A Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan. Nancy Loucas, co-director of Aotearoa Vapers Community Advocacy (AVCA), says the plan acknowledges vaping, but it fails to support it as a key factor to achieving a smoke-free nation.