It was the kind of bold public health measure praised and copied around the world: a lifelong smoking ban that would prevent future generations from ever getting addicted to nicotine.
But New Zealand’s new business-friendly right-wing government has decided to scrap the world-leading measure because it wants to increase tax revenues from the sale of cigarettes.
The decision by the newly installed coalition has shocked and angered health campaigners, with one leading academic, Boyd Swinburn, professor of global health at the University of Auckland, saying New Zealand had gone from “hero to zero” with the decision—and others warning that it would cost thousands of lives, especially in the indigenous Maori community.
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The lifelong smoking ban was passed in 2021 under then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and was meant to prevent anyone born after 2009 from ever buying cigarettes legally. Other measures included slashing the number of stores allowed to sell cigarettes and cutting the amount of nicotine in tobacco products.
But businesses including tobacco companies and shop-owners complained, and at the weekend, even before the government officially took power, the newly appointed health minister announced that the ban would be shelved to help make up a tax shortfall.
The government is headed by National Party leader Christopher Luxon, a former top executive at Unilever who went on to become CEO of Air New Zealand before moving into politics.
The National Party is blaming the decision on the refusal of its coalition partner, the populist New Zealand First, to reopen the country’s property market to foreign buyers.
“We are appalled and disgusted,” Professor Richard Edwards, a public health specialist at the University of Otago, told BBC News. “This is an incredibly retrograde step on world-leading, absolutely excellent health measures.”
New Zealand’s now-ditched smoking ban inspired Rishi Sunak’s goverment in the U.K. to announce a similar generational ban in September. A Downing Street spokesperson said that ban would remain in place despite the New Zealand about-turn.
