New Zealand’s world-first law to ban the next generation from ever being able to buy cigarettes may have provided the blueprint for measures announced this week by Rishi Sunak, but while New Zealand’s public health officials have applauded the ban, opposition groups – some backed by big tobacco – are hoping to curb the changes.
In his speech to the Tory conference on Wednesday, Sunak announced his government aims to raise the smoking age by one year, every year, meaning a 14-year-old today will never legally be sold a cigarette.
The measures, first revealed by the Guardian last week, are similar to those brought in by New Zealand last December.
At the time of the law’s passing, New Zealand’s associate health minister, Ayesha Verrall, said: “Thousands of people will live longer, healthier lives and the health system will be $5bn better off from not needing to treat the illnesses caused by smoking, such as numerous types of cancer, heart attacks, strokes, amputations.”
New Zealand’s law will also be accompanied by a slew of other measures to make smoking less affordable and accessible, including dramatically reducing the legal amount of nicotine in tobacco products and forcing them to be sold only through specialty tobacco stores, rather than corner stores and supermarkets.
Anti-smoking advocates widely hailed the law as a win to help New Zealand reach its goal of making the country “smoke-free” by 2025.
“The law was very well received by the public health community and extremely well received by the international tobacco control community because they were amazed New Zealand could be so far-sighted – especially on the nicotine phaseout,” says Nick Wilson, a professor in public health at the University of Otago, who studies tobacco control.
The nicotine phaseout will do the heavy lifting when it comes to reducing smoking rates – more so than a ban on younger generations, who are already shunning smoking, Wilson says.
“My advice to the UK would be to focus on the key part of the package, which is de-nicotinisation,” Wilson says. “If you do de-nicotinisation first, you will see retailers switching from smoking to vaping to quite a large extent, which will ameliorate [retailers’] economic concerns.”
New Zealand is at an advantage when it comes to implementing its smoke-free plan, Wilson adds, due to its smaller population, its years-long campaign to reduce smoking and its isolation, which limits the possibility of cigarettes being smuggled into the country to fuel a black market.
Smuggling of cigarettes into the UK could be a problem, according to Wilson, who says there is some comfort to be found in the slowly declining smoking rates across the EU. “As the legal market shrinks, the smuggled market also shrinks.”
‘A country saturated in vape stores’
Smoking rates in New Zealand have been trending downwards since the 1980s, helped by a steady increase in tobacco prices and major public health campaigns. Official figures show that the amount of tobacco smoked per person decreased by 39% between 2010 and 2018. Now, roughly 8% of adult New Zealanders smoke daily – about 331,000 people. The most significant drop in rates have been among 18- to 24-year-olds; 8.2% in 2023 compared with 25% in 2006.
However, the drop in tobacco smoking has coincided with a rise in vaping. Ministry of health figures show that 8.3% of people over 15 vape, up from 3.5% in 2019. Most of those reported being a former or current smoker. A smaller, but increasing, group who vaped said they had not previously smoked.
New Zealand has been slow to regulate vaping, Wilson says, allowing the country to become saturated in vape stores and the industry to “excessively market vaping as a lifestyle product to young people”. Vaping is not captured by the smoking crackdown but is subject to other regulations.
The major parties on both sides of the political spectrum – Labour and National – have committed to reducing the number of vaping outlets across the country, clamping down on single-use vapes, prohibiting names that could appeal to youth such as “cotton-candy” and ensuring vape shops cannot sell goods within 300 metres of schools.
‘Convenience stores will be out of business’
Opposition to New Zealand’s law has come primarily via the owners of convenience stores – known as dairies in New Zealand – who are concerned they will suffer financial losses from reduced sales.
A recent RNZ investigation into one of the most visible anti-smokefree groups – Save Our Stores – found the campaign, which is designed to look like a grassroots movement, is being quietly backed by tobacco brands BAT (British American Tobacco) New Zealand and Imperial Brands.
The ministry of health has already started implementing part of the smoke-free plan to slash the number of outlets selling tobacco too, from 6,000 to roughly 600 nationwide.
The chair of the Dairy and Business Owner’s group (which is not affiliated with the Save Our Stores campaign), Sunny Kaushal, claims half the country’s dairies could be forced to close, due to either decreased revenue or getting caught up in the bureaucracy to become a registered outlet. Kaushal is also fearful that those dairies who do sell cigarettes will “become targets for criminals”.
“Our guys will be turned into an ‘all-you-can-rob’ buffet for criminals when there’s been an explosion in serious crime directed at us,” he said.
But the loss of revenue argument does not stack up, Wilson says, because the sales will be made up by the shift to vape products.
Ultimately, convenience stores selling highly addictive products is “madness”, Wilson says.
“Making money from a business that kills half your customers in the long run is just unconscionable and any sensible government wouldn’t make the trade-off between the 5,000 deaths a year from smoking and keeping dairy owners going.”
