Read articles from New Zealand

October 20, 2021 by thespinoff.co.nz

A game-changing move to make cigarettes non-addictive will be a decisive nail in the coffin of smoking harm in New Zealand, write professors of public health Richard Edwards and Chris Bullen.

Big tobacco has long known it is in the nicotine delivery business. The addictive substance grabs new customers and ensures they get trapped in a purchasing loop even as ill-health takes hold.

Associate minister of health Ayesha Verrall’s Smokefree Action Plan sets to change that by making New Zealand the first country to slash nicotine levels in cigarettes.

October 19, 2021 by medicalxpress.com

More than a third of New Zealand high school students have tried vaping, with 10 percent vaping regularly and six percent vaping weekly or more often, researchers have found. The study [...] reflects the situation before the Government banned the sale of vaping products to under 18-year-olds and prohibited e-cigarette marketing late last year.

Researcher Dr. Jude Ball, from the University of Otago, Wellington, says the study highlights the importance of getting the balance right between making it easy for adult smokers to switch to less harmful vaping, while protecting young non-smokers.

October 08, 2021 by scoop.co.nz

More than two thirds of vapers believe New Zealand’s approach to vaping as a tobacco harm reduction tool is world-leading and should be promoted overseas to save millions of lives, according to a new survey conducted by research house IRI.

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union has released this research an anticipation of the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Conference (COP9) this November.

The IRI survey, conducted in September, asked more than 500 Kiwi vapers what they thought of New Zealand’s use of vaping as a tool to help smokers quit. Over 80 per cent said vaping had helped them to reduce or quit smoking. [...]

September 24, 2021 by vapingpost.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.