New Zealand to ban smoking for next generation in bid to outlaw habit by 2025

[Cigar Surgeon]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/09/new-zealand-to-ban-smoking-for-next-generation-in-bid-to-outlaw-habit-by-2025

New Zealand to ban smoking for next generation in bid to outlaw habit by 2025

 

Tess McClure in Christchurch

@tessairini

Wed 8 Dec 2021 23.29 GMT

 

 

New Zealand has announced it will outlaw smoking for the next generation, so that those who are aged 14 and under today will never be legally able to buy tobacco.

New legislation means the legal smoking age will increase every year, to create a smoke-free generation of New Zealanders, associate health minister Dr Ayesha Verrall said on Thursday.

 

“This is a historic day for the health of our people,” she said.

The government announced the rising age alongside other measures to make smoking unaffordable and inaccessible, to try to reach its goal of making the country entirely smoke-free within the next four years. Other measures include reducing the legal amount of nicotine in tobacco products to very low levels, cutting down the shops where cigarettes could legally be sold, and increasing funding to addiction services. The new laws will not restrict vape sales.

“We want to make sure young people never start smoking so we will make it an offence to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth. People aged 14 when the law comes into effect will never be able to legally purchase tobacco,” Verrall said.

New Zealand’s daily smoking rates have been dropping over time – down to 11.6% in 2018, from 18% a decade earlier. But smoking rates for Māori and Pacifika were far higher – 29% for Māori and 18% for Pasifika. “If nothing changes, it would be decades till Māori smoking rates fall below 5%,” Verrall said. She said eradicating smoking in the next four years was within reach: “I believe it is. In fact, we’re on track to for the New Zealand European population. The issue is, though, if we don’t change what we’re doing, we won’t make it for Maori – and that’s [what] the plan is really focused on”.

The policies were welcomed by public health experts on Thursday. “New Zealand once again leads the world – this time with a cutting-edge smokefree 2025 implementation plan – it’s truly a game changer,” said Dr Natalie Walker, director of the Centre for Addiction Research at University of Auckland. The reduction of nicotine in cigarettes was a world first, said public health prof Chris Bullen. From a health perspective, “all my wishes have come true”, he said.

Smoking has already been widely replaced by vaping among teenage New Zealanders, and is also attracting many young people who would never have taken up smoking – according to surveying of 19,000 high school students this year, nearly 20% were vaping daily or several times a day, the majority with high nicotine doses. That’s compared to 3% of those aged 15-17 who smoked daily in 2018, or 13% who smoked a decade earlier.

The plan has come under criticism from some parties – the Act party has argued that reducing the nicotine in products will hit lower-income people hardest, who will have to buy more cigarettes and smoke more to access the same dose. Verrall said the very low levels required by the laws had been researched and proven to help people quit.

Concerns have also been raised about a growing black market for tobacco. The government acknowledged this risk in initial proposals: “Evidence indicates that the amount of tobacco products being smuggled into New Zealand has increased substantially in recent years and organised criminal groups are involved in large-scale smuggling,” it said.

Initial plans for a smoke free generation of New Zealanders have now been finalised after public consultation. They were first floated in April. They will still need to pass through the legislative process, but should not face any obstacles – Smokefree 2025 is a headline Labour policy, and the party holds a majority in New Zealand parliament. Verrall said the legislation would be introduced in 2022, with the age limits coming in in 2023.

[BrightonCorgi]

They should expand this to any product that has nicotine or tobacco.  Ensure no tobacco products are bought or consumed.

[Nino]

44 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

They should expand this to any product that has nicotine or tobacco.  Ensure no tobacco products are bought or consumed.

.... so we cigar smokers can suck our thumbs ??

[SpecialK]

I sometimes fear we are fighting a losing battle.... Socialism looks very attractive to the younger generation..

 

[BrightonCorgi]

15 minutes ago, Nino said:

.... so we cigar smokers can suck our thumbs ??

Unfortunately this will have to be case.  I am not for tobacco use bans at all.  I'd still let them advertise on F1 cars if it were up to me. 

If country wants to eradicate tobacco use, they need to ban all forms. 😞

[Puros Y Vino]

Feel free to get morbidly obese though  

[Nino]

7 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

If country wants to eradicate tobacco use, they need to ban all forms. 😞

Off topic - but if a country wants to eradicate Covid-19 and enforces mandatory .....

..........   ??

[Bijan]

36 minutes ago, SpecialK said:

I sometimes fear we are fighting a losing battle.... Socialism looks very attractive to the younger generation..

 

Socialism rightly or wrongly is about making all people equal. Which can mean cutting down the rich so everyone is equally poor.

We can object to that obviously. But preventing people from doing things that are bad for them or that we think are bad for them is just nanny state busybody behavior.

[BrightonCorgi]

15 minutes ago, Nino said:

Off topic - but if a country wants to eradicate Covid-19 and enforces mandatory .....

..........   ??

Countries are making shots mandatory.  Virus is a part of nature and beyond their control completely.  Mandatory vaccinations and total tobacco bans are for your best interest.  Best interest of the Country.

What products that are imported and allowed to be consumed is under their control. Bit of a difference.

[Nino]

3 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

Countries are making shots mandatory.  Virus is a part of nature and beyond their control completely.  Mandatory vaccinations and total tobacco bans are for your best interest.  Best interest of the Country.

What products that are imported and allowed to be consumed is under their control. Bit of a difference.

NZ is making a tobacco ban mandatory - I see no difference.

Best to quote from @Bijan above :

Quote

We can object to that obviously. But preventing people from doing things that are bad for them or that we think are bad for them is just nanny state busybody behavior.

 

[BrightonCorgi]

8 minutes ago, Nino said:

NZ is making a tobacco ban mandatory - I see no difference

Mandatory vaccinations do not eradicate Covid (or any other virus).  Mandatory vaccinations will impede the lethality of Covid as a whole to people.  Covid itself isn't going anywhere.

Tobacco bans means no more tobacco is coming into the country.  Make tobacco like illegal drugs in Singapore and tobacco use will be near extinct in no time.

[Bijan]

4 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

Mandatory vaccinations do not eradicate Covid (or any other virus).  Mandatory vaccinations will impede the lethality of Covid as a whole to people.  Covid itself isn't going anywhere.

This depends on the disease. At the present time with COVID what you say seems correct. But smallpox vaccine was about 95% effective and that is gone. And wherever measles and polio are well vaccinated they basically don't exist as diseases either only surviving where vaccination rates are lower.

It really depends on how much the particular disease mutates and changes over time as well as how effective the vaccines are.

[BrightonCorgi]

Just now, Bijan said:

This depends on the disease. At the present time with COVID what you say seems correct. But smallpox vaccine was about 95% effective and that is gone. And wherever measles and polio are well vaccinated they basically don't exist as diseases either only surviving where vaccination rates are lower.

It really depends on how much the particular disease mutates and changes over time as well as how effective the vaccines are.

If those viruses were non-existent, we would no longer need to those vaccinations. 

[Bijan]

8 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

If those viruses were non-existent, we would no longer need to those vaccinations. 

I wasn't vaccinated for smallpox neither was my two year old son. My parents were.

Edit: from 1999 to 2019 there were 0 cases of smallpox reported in Canada. I doubt you could get smoking down to absolute zero regardless of the type of ban. Unless government agents go from house to house.

[BrightonCorgi]

9 minutes ago, Bijan said:

I wasn't vaccinated for smallpox neither was my two year old son. My parents were.

Edit: from 1999 to 2019 there were 0 cases of smallpox reported in Canada. I doubt you could get smoking down to absolute zero regardless of the type of ban. Unless government agents go from house to house.

Smallpox is unique among viruses.

[Cigar Surgeon]

1 hour ago, SpecialK said:

I sometimes fear we are fighting a losing battle.... Socialism looks very attractive to the younger generation..

 

I wouldn't be so quick to decry Socialism or in the US 'Democrats' as the root cause. Halfwheel tracks smoking bans by Counties and States and there are just as many, if not more smoking bans in Republican Counties and States as Democratic. But I will agree with you that it is a losing battle, and I've been hammering on this drum for about 8 years. 

The truth is that there are very few allies in Government when it comes to cigar rights, and at best it seems you can only hold the line for a period of time. 

[Greenhorn2]

My dad used to farm tobacco. One day he told me that I  will see fields of marijuana growing everywhere and people will be sneaking around in the woods planting tobacco if I live long enough.  I'm beginning to think he hit the nail on the head. 

[BrightonCorgi]

1 hour ago, Cigar Surgeon said:

I wouldn't be so quick to decry Socialism or in the US 'Democrats' as the root cause. Halfwheel tracks smoking bans by Counties and States and there are just as many, if not more smoking bans in Republican Counties and States as Democratic. But I will agree with you that it is a losing battle, and I've been hammering on this drum for about 8 years. 

The truth is that there are very few allies in Government when it comes to cigar rights, and at best it seems you can only hold the line for a period of time. 

It's authoritarianism that has caught fire among those in power.  Be it a fascist or socialist regime; it's all the same.  Government control & dependence of the individual. 

Vaccine mandates & tobacco bans are just steps towards of the use of social credit scoring

[TheGipper]

1 hour ago, Bijan said:

But smallpox vaccine was about 95% effective and that is gone. And wherever measles and polio are well vaccinated they basically don't exist as diseases either only surviving where vaccination rates are lower.

Smallpox and measles had no animal reservoirs at all.  They were exclusively human viruses.  Polio could infect higher primates only (in addition to humans) but they were essentially no animal reservoirs that could infect humans.

That is why eradication was possible with those viruses.

There are significant animal reservoirs for SARS-CoV-2.  It will never be eradicated.

[Nino]

1 hour ago, BrightonCorgi said:

Tobacco bans means no more tobacco is coming into the country.  Make tobacco like illegal drugs in Singapore and tobacco use will be near extinct in no time.

... Make that "coming into the country officially/legally" ....

There will be a big black market and prices will go up while quality will go down ( non-tested stuff will flood NZ ).

As for drugs into S'pore - I read ALL the time about drug smugglers being sentenced to death in S'pore and it has most def NOT ended the drug trade.

Not there - not anywhere.

[Bijan]

Just now, TheGipper said:

Smallpox and measles had no animal reservoirs at all.  Polio could infect higher primates only (in addition to humans) but they were essentially no animal reservoirs that could infect humans.

That is why eradication was possible with those viruses.

There are significant animal reservoirs for SARS-CoV-2.  It will never be eradicated.

Yeah but it seems COVID only crossed that barrier once. Definitely not spreading from bats to people in North America but from people at this point. Jury's still out on if it was bats or lab leak to some degree too.

Measles is also the most or one of the most infectious diseases.

[TheGipper]

Just now, Bijan said:

Yeah but it seems COVID only crossed that barrier once.

Nonsense.  We have lots of cross infection cases post case zero.  It's infecting a large number of species, including domesticated dogs and cats.

It's not going to be eradicated.  Maybe it's time to stop supporting government policies that pretend this is possible.

[Bijan]

Just now, TheGipper said:

Nonsense.  We have lots of cross infection cases post case zero.  It's infecting a large number of species, including domesticated dogs and cats.

It's not going to be eradicated.  Maybe it's time to stop supporting government policies that pretend this is possible.

Yes how many people have got it from cats and dogs though?

[TheGipper]

2 minutes ago, Bijan said:

Yes how many people have got it from cats and dogs though?

Do you think if the answer is as low "one", that it would be a sufficiently small number?

Do you think the supposed index case zero in the Wuhan wet market (i.e., a single transmission from a bat or pangolin to human) was a sufficiently small number to prevent a pandemic?

You're rationalizing irrational government policies.

 

[RichG]

The number of cases contracted from cats and dogs will increase exponentially once they start to receive Botox lip injections.