Home » New Zealand Prime Minister Ardern wants a “smoke-free” country by 2025

New Zealand Prime Minister Ardern wants a “smoke-free” country by 2025

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LONDON – The ban on smoking in public places and also in the workplace is now a norm in much of the world. But New Zealand wants to do more: to completely ban cigarettes, the government of Jacinda Ardern has decided to prohibit its sale to anyone born after 2004. A step that aims to create a “smoke free” generation, free from smoke, and gradually the subsequent ones with the aim of becoming a nation in which none or almost smoke, nowhere, by 2025.

The plan provides for a gradual increase in the legal minimum age to buy cigarettes, with a strict ban on the youngest, i.e. those under the age of 18. Other measures considered include a significant reduction in the level of nicotine allowed in tobacco, the prohibition of filters and the restriction of the places where cigarettes can be sold.

“We need a new approach,” he says Ayesha Verrall, Deputy Minister for Health, al Guardian. “Every year 4500 New Zealanders die from tobacco and we want to accelerate our plans to become a non-smoking country.” The proposals were welcomed by a large number of public health organizations. The Cancer Society, for example, notes that the number of tobacconists is four times higher in lower-income neighborhoods, where the smoking rate is higher and the disease-related diseases are higher. “The kind of inequalities that we have to fight with new measures like these,” comments its president Lucy Elwood. “It is the beginning of the end for smokers,” congratulates a spokesman for the New Zealand Maori community, among which tobacco is particularly widespread as well as its consequences for health.

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But the project also arouses criticism. Many small shop owners who sell a little bit of everything from groceries to newspapers fear that they will fail without the income from cigarettes. Some parties and experts say the strict ban will eventually create a black market for cigarettes, favoring organized crime rather than reducing smoking. And someone also wonders to what extent a government should intervene in the lives of citizens: “Adults can decide for themselves”, writes a commentator, “it is a philosophical principle”. The government replies that something needs to be done: smoking is responsible for one in four cancer deaths in New Zealand.

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