Source: Radio New Zealand
Associate health minister Casey Costello says getting through longer term smokers was the most challenging part of the process. RNZ
Smoking is on the decline in New Zealand, but the Ministry of Health’s most recent health survey shows the government is unlikely to meet its SmokeFree 2025 target.
New Zealand was https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/578576/most-deteriorated-nz-plummets-in-global-tobacco-control-ranking recently labelled “most deteriorated”] in an international study assessing the interference of the tobacco industry.
New Zealand’s smoking rate has been dipping throughout the last decade, but has somewhat stagnated the last three years and is sitting at 6.8 percent, just above the 5 percent target.
In 2024, the government scrapped laws which would have slashed tobacco retailers from 6000 to 600, removed 95 percent of the nicotine from cigarettes and banned sales of cigarettes to anyone born after 2009.
The prevalence of daily vaping had increased slightly from 11.1 percent last year to 11.7 percent this year.
Associate health minister Casey Costello said getting through longer term smokers was the most challenging part of the process.
She recently told RNZ the data was only to the end of June 2025, so the entirety of the year’s data wouldn’t be known until the next survey.
She noted that under 25s were already a “smoke-free generation” with smoking rates of around 3 percent.
The country plummeted from second in the world in 2023 to 53rd in the 2025 Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index.
The main factors damaging New Zealand’s standing are the repeal of the smokefree generation laws, the tax break benefiting tobacco giant Philip Morris and the movement of staff between politics and the lobbying industry.
In July 2024, the government cut the tax on HTPs in half, in what it said would be a one-year trial subject to an evaluation.
But Costello told RNZ the evaluation would now be done in July 2027 and the reduced tax rate would apply to HTPs at least until then.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand