During its second and final reading, the New Zealand House of Representatives, voted on 13 December 2022 in favour of the proposed law from November 2021 by the Government of the Labour Party of Jacinda Arden prohibiting those who become of age from procuring tobacco and cigarettes and allowing it only to those already in adulthood born before 2009.
New Zealand has thus banned smoking from buying cigarettes from every younger generation for life, and its government is apparently waiting for cigarettes to disappear from the market over the last generation that would retain the same right to make the country “smoke-free” without any extra work on its part. Something it still acts as if this was scheduled for 2025.
So New Zealanders who voted against legalising cannabis in the 2019 referendum will not have the opportunity to buy or try even the tobacco and cigarettes that are legal that contain it that obviously comes as a result. In the October 2019 elections that elected Jacinda Arden’s Labour Party government, the issue of legalisation of recreational cannabis use and patient euthanasia was put to a parallel vote, which was passed down by a positive majority, while cannabis legalisation was rejected by the electorate with a narrow majority of 51% to 49% who accepted it. As a result, the government has the ability to ban smoking of legal cigarettes itself without placing cannabis on the market. Recreational use of cannabis remains legal in Canada, Mexico, Uruguay, and Malta, and in twenty U.S. states.
This law, whenever it provides for the same in other countries, is often referred to as the generational endgame for smoking and prohibits young people who become of age now and in the future from obtaining tobacco and cigarettes, allowing smoking and trying it only to people already in adulthood born before 2009, but without also mentioning e-cigarettes and heating tobacco which will continue to be sold to all adult citizens. Of the 5 million New Zealanders and Anglo-Saxon colonisers, 8% smoke, down from 9.4% last year. At the same time, the number of users of electronic substitutes increased from 6.2% to 8.3%.
The tobacco prohibition law will come into force in 2023, depriving New Zealand citizens of their choice and right to choose from it as they take up their individual responsibility. It was first proposed in November 2021 and passed almost unanimously by the New Zealand House of Representatives, since its first reading last July (the upper legislative council last functioned, dissolved and abolished in 1951). The opposing view of one of the opposition parties (the ACT) and the scepticism of the Greens and the main opposition of the New Zealand National Party were not enough to prevent the anti-smoking and smoking bill from being passed.
The country’s deputy health minister said last July that “For decades we have been allowing tobacco companies to maintain their market share by making their deadly product increasingly addictive. It’s disgusting and it’s weird. We have more regulations in this country for the safety of selling a sandwich than for a cigarette. We want to ensure that young people never start smoking, so we will make it an offence to sell or supply smoking tobacco products to new groups of young people. People aged 14 when the law comes into force will never be able to legally buy tobacco. Smoking rates plummet. Our goal of being smoke-free by 2025 is achievable,” stating more aptly that there is no safe age to start smoking. Now that the stalled law will take effect in 2023 the deputy health minister stated that “Thousands of people will live longer, healthier lives and the health system will be $5 billion better than not having to treat the disease caused by smoking, such as numerous types of cancer, heart attacks, strokes, amputations.’.
The bill also that became law on December 13, 2022, limits the number of shops that sell tobacco exclusively to already adult citizens at present to 600 of the 6,000 they were, which implies that supermarkets and grocery stores will not sell tobacco instead of tobacconists and gift shops, and requires the issuance of a special license for the retail sale and trade of tobacco. It equally drastically limits the nicotine contained in the available cigarettes, which in Oceania cost the equivalent of £18 as 35 Australian or New Zealand dollars, exclusively to already adult citizens by 95%, by leaving the negligible one twentieth as 5% of the nicotine of cigarettes as they are known to the rest of the world.
Bring Back Smoking Freedom 