New Zealand has been hitting the headlines following the announcement that the sale of cigarettes or any tobacco products to people who were born after 2008 will not be permitted under new laws.
The hope is that this move will mean that the country can become entirely ‘smoke-free’ in the future.
RELATED STORIES
It is expected that the laws will start to be enacted in the new year.
New Zealand’s Health Minister, Dr Ayesha Verall, was quoted by the BBC as saying, “We want to make sure young people never start smoking.”
By making it less likely that people will ever start smoking, the hope is, along with implementation of tighter and tighter restrictions on tobacco products, that the amount of smokers will decrease until there is none left at all.
People born after 2008 will never be able to buy cigarettes for the duration of their lifetime.
“[The ban] will help people quit or switch to less harmful products, and make it much less likely that young people get addicted to nicotine,” University of Otago’s Prof Janet Hook told the BBC.
However, the new laws will not impede the sale of vaping products.
Vaping will not be targeted as yet as the government is focussed on reducing the numbers of preventable deaths caused by smoking.
In a survey of 19,000 New Zealand high school students conducted this year, around 20% students were vaping daily or several times a day according to The Guardian .
The new laws have come under some criticism from certain parties.
With some policies also seeking to reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes being sold in New Zealand, the country’s Act party has claimed that reducing the amount of nicotine in cigarettes will negatively impact lower-income families.
They argue that people will have to buy more cigarettes to get their desired dose of nicotine. However, Dr Verrall defended the policies, pointing out that lower levels of nicotine are proven to help people quit long-term.
Many experts have stood by the idea and welcomed the move for the country.
The hope is that the country will start to be able to become smoke-free by 2025.
“New Zealand once again leads the world, this time with a cutting-edge smokefree 2025 implementation plan, it’s truly a game changer,” Dr Natalie Walker, director of the Centre for Addiction Research at University of Auckland, was quoted as saying.
While the idea has been welcomed by many people, it is hard to say whether the rest of the world will be quick to follow suit in implementing more restrictions on tobacco products.
h/t: BBC
