New Zealand Labor’s controversial bill to gradually raise the age limit for legal supply of tobacco products from the market each year until no one is legally allowed to supply cigarettes, planned from autumn 2021 by the Jacinda Ardern government, has entered the debate as expected in parliament and the House of Representatives (the country’s upper legislative council was dissolved and abolished in 1951). According to this anyone born after 2008 starting from 2023 will not be able to legally buy cigarettes.
As the Deputy Minister of Health said, there is no absolutely safe age for someone to start smoking. The bill also provides for reducing the number of retail outlets selling tobacco products from 8,000 to just 500 as well as reducing the levels of nicotine content in cigarettes by a drastic 95% until its content reaches just 0.05% . VLNC (very low nicotine content) cigarettes would be the cheapest on the market out of all the rest, costing 30 New Zealand (and Australian) dollars, which is equal to the comparatively inconceivable amount of 20 Euros and 17 pounds sterling for 25 pieces. 22nd Century Tobacco by making the approved reduced risk tobacco product VLN King directly supported this aspect of the legislation. Vaping to all adults as opposed to smoking for them will remain legal.
Both the main opposition National Party and the Green Party have expressed their reservations and concerns about the bill, without saying they will vote against it, and the libertarian ACT party strongly opposes its passage.
Chief Opposition MP Matt Doosey said of the Jacinda Ardern government’s bill that “Regarding its experimental nature, most of the measures under consideration have yet to be widely implemented internationally and in some cases, New Zealand will be the first to people who will implement them. I have no problem with New Zealand being the first in the world. However, there is significant uncertainty as to the results.”
Greens MP Chloe Swarbrick said “The Greens have some serious concerns about the possibility of a new kind of criminal ban” referring to the possibility of the law being enforced, matching the choice of younger people to smoke and the methodology that would be followed to prevent it; while she stated of the fractionation of nicotine levels that “It has not, as far as I understand, been tested anywhere and therefore will require serious testing.” The leader of the opposition ACT Liberal Party, David Seymour, gave the following interview with his opinion on the report with the reporter from Sky News Australia:
Now what is happening in New Zealand? Keeps astonishing me. Sinister new race politics, its new health fascism, its harsh lockdowns, its draconian plans to fight global warming by taxing cattle burps, and now the latest sign of authoritarianism: it’s planned to ban smoking for future generations, a plan now urged in Australia too. Here is new Zealand’s associate health minister explaining the end of the freedom to smoke in New Zealand even in private:
“We are legislating for a smoke-free generation by making it an offence to sell or supply tobacco products to those aged 14. When the law comes into effect, as they age, they and future generations will never legally be able to purchase tobacco, because the truth is there is no safe age to start smoking.”
The way it works is each year goes by, the ban extends to older people, so if you’re 14 now you’ll never be able to legally buy cigarettes in New Zealand. Now, you may be like me, you’re load smoking support bans on smokers stinking up your air, but this ban takes government bullying to a serving new level. Yet just one party in the New Zealand parliament, the ACT party, has said it’s against. Joining me is the leader of ACT, David Seymour. Thank you so much for your time. Why is your party against this bill?
Well, there’s no longer a public interest in further regulating smoking. We tax smokers to the extent that they are more than paying for any impact they have on the health care system. We have informed smokers to the point that I don’t know anyone who doesn’t think that smoking is dangerous, and we have regulated where people can smoke to the point where you can’t smoke at work, you can’t smoke in hospitality venues, you can’t smoke anywhere except outdoor areas and your own home, so what is the remaining public interest? You can be as anti-smoking as you like, but that’s not the question, there is no remaining public reason to further regulate smoking. They’re only harming themselves. Fully informed I think people should be able to make such choices.
You make the argument perfectly. This goes beyond any public interest. This is actual interference in the right of a person to, well, abuse their body any way they choose, without hurting anyone else. I just can’t believe that this is now proposed, but what I also can’t believe is that no other party joins you in knocking back, you know, pushing back on this. Why would that be?
Well, I think the other parties are simply afraid to speak truth to what is out of control. Power, we now have control for control’s sake, and there’s another aspect of this law that you may be interested in, they also want to limit the range of places that can sell tobacco and limit the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. Now, this last one is particularly stupid, because nicotine, while addictive, is not in itself harmful, it’s all the tar and the toxins you get while trying to feed your nicotine addiction that actually harm you. But if you reduce the amount of nicotine per cigarette, people are likely to compensate by getting more tar and toxins out of cigarettes that don’t have as much nicotine per drag, this is just how completely illogical the policy has become. What’s more, it will mean the only way to get high nicotine cigarettes will be at the black market. The New Zealand government is currently allocated two and a half million to fight the black market for tobacco, that will be a growth industry unfortunately.
Well, that’s exactly the cases, and as soon as you create a law banning something, you immediately create a class of criminals, and you give incentive, and you create a market for breaking that law. So that’s almost certain now going to happen. Look, the thing here is, and I mentioned a few issues that I’ve had problems with, New Zealand, I’ve had guests from New Zealand talking about these things. There seems to me to be a new authoritarianism in Jacinda Ardene’s New Zealand. Is that how you see it? Does it disturb you?
Well, I think Jacinda Arden, after her extraordinary election result in 2020, misread the mandate. She thought that she was being asked to implement all of her wonderful ideas, in truth people were behaving in quite unusual ways due to the trauma of Covid or perhaps more accurately her government’s response to Covid. The government is slowly unravelling and losing its popularity because people are slowly waking up to them, and they’re discovering that actually people didn’t want all of their magical policies, that they dreamed up as student politicians, which is where most of them came from, so they could say ‘I don’t’. See it as being as sinister, as some people do. I think they got too much political power, they’re deeply misguided, they don’t live in the real world but that doesn’t mean that they’re not doing real damage, and you’re starting to see an outflow of New Zealanders. Unfortunately for New Zealand the safety valve for our country is that when things get bad, people start to leave. Until the policies improve, and we’re going to face a very expensive loss of skilled people over the coming year or so as a result of the approach this government’s taken.
Extraordinary scenes, David Seymour, thank you so much indeed for your time.
Bring Back Smoking Freedom 
Hello from the UK
Many thanks for your post. I was not aware of this issue of banning smoking altogether, very bizarre. I have never smoked and never like the smell in railway carriages if I couldn’t find a seat in a non-smoking department.
However, I like the smell of cigars and pipe tobacco up to a point. I wonder how much the issue with cigarettes are what most of them are treated with or plastic type filters.
What concerns me too is the e-cigarettes and what nasty chemicals people are breathing, first or second hand.
In any event I hope you get a government that actually seeks to help the people rather than plunge them into debt etc. as Jacinda Ardern and her people have done.
Certainly the authoritarianism of the current government has been appalling although I must add it has also taken the mini-Hitlers in the country to enforce it as much as anything.
Let people be responsible adults and learn to consider others I say. Draconian laws will never change people’s hearts.
Kind regards.
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Well done for believing so. Congratulations that the nasty law has been repealed and enjoy all the rest!
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