Starting 2027, anyone 14 years of age or younger will never be able to legally buy tobacco products in New Zealand under planned legislation. This is one of the world’s toughest crackdowns on the tobacco industry, in an effort to virtually stop people from smoking in the country. The pacific country of roughly five million people unveiled parts of the proposal on Thursday.
The legislation would curb a vast amount of retailers that sell tobacco and cut nicotine levels in all products. The ban will remain in effect for the rest of the person’s, so that means a person aged 51 in 2064 will be banned from buying tobacco products, but a person aged 52 in that year would be able to do so.
The New Zealand Associate Minister of Health, Ayesha Verrall said in a statement “we want to make sure young people never start smoking so we will make it an offense to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth,… If nothing changes, it would be decades till Māori smoking rates fall below 5 per cent, and this government is not prepared to leave people behind.”
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