JAKARTA - New Zealand plans to ban its youth from buying cigarettes for life, in one of the world's toughest crackdowns on the tobacco industry, arguing other efforts to snuff out cigarettes are taking too long.
New Zealanders aged 14 and under will never be allowed to buy cigarettes in the Pacific nation of five million, part of a proposal announced on Thursday that would also limit the number of retailers authorized to sell tobacco and reduce nicotine levels in the country. all products.
"We want to make sure young people never start smoking, so we would make it a violation to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to a younger generation," Associate Minister of Health New Zealand Ayesha Verrall said in a statement.
"If nothing changes, it will be decades until the Māori smoking rate drops below 5 percent, and this government is not prepared to abandon people."
Currently, 11.6 percent of all New Zealanders over the age of 15 smoke, a proportion that has risen to 29 percent among indigenous Maori adults, according to government figures.
The government will consult with a Maori health task force in the coming months, before introducing the law to parliament in June next year, with the aim of making it law by the end of 2022.
Next, the restrictions will then be rolled out in stages starting in 2024, starting with a sharp reduction in the number of authorized sellers, followed by a reduction in nicotine requirements by 2025 and the creation of a smoke-free generation starting in 2027.
The package of actions would make New Zealand's retail tobacco industry one of the most restricted in the world, just behind Bhutan, where the sale of cigarettes is outright banned. New Zealand's neighbour, Australia, was the first country in the world to make plain cigarette packs mandatory in 2012.
The New Zealand government says while existing measures such as regular packaging and levies on sales have slowed tobacco consumption, tougher measures are needed to achieve its goal of less than 5 per cent of the population smoking daily by 2025.
The new rules will halve the country's smoking rate within 10 years of taking effect, the government said.
"Smoking kills around 5,000 people per year in New Zealand, making it one of the leading causes of preventable death in the country. Four in five smokers start smoking before the age of 18," the government said.
Health authorities welcome this decisive action. Retailers have expressed concern about the impact on their businesses, warning of the emergence of a black market.
The government did not provide specifics on how the new rules would be monitored, or whether and how they would apply to visitors to the country.
"Smoking kills 14 New Zealanders every day and two in three smokers will die from smoking," New Zealand Medical Association Chair Alistair Humphrey said in a statement.
"This action plan offers some hope of realizing our Aotearoa Smoke-Free 2025 goal, and keeping our tamariki (Maori children) smoke-free," he said.
Separately, the Dairy and Business Owners Group, a lobbying group for local convenience stores known in New Zealand as dairies, said while supporting a smoke-free country, the government's plans would destroy many businesses.
"This is all 100 percent theory and zero percent substance. There will be a crime wave. Gangs and criminals will fill the gap with smoking houses next to the residence," the group's leader, Sunny Kaushal, told Stuff.co.nz.
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