The New Zealand Parliament started on Tuesday the first reading of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill. The amendment seeks to repeal the previous government’s initiatives in controlling tobacco sales.
The previous government set the Smokefree 2025 goal, to reduce smoking rates for all population groups to less than 5 percent. The government wished to eliminate inequities in smoking rates and smoking-related illnesses, ensure the younger generation never start smoking, and to increase the number of people who successfully quit smoking. To deliver the goal, the previous government enacted the world’s first law banning tobacco sales for future generations. The enactment included a cut by 90 percent in the number of retailers that could sell smoked tobacco products, a low nicotine limit on smoked tobacco products and the prohibition of sales of smoked tobacco products to all those born after January 1, 2009.
The amendment introduced by the current coalition government seeks to repeal all three policies before they take effect. The Associate Minister of Health Casey Costello stated that the previous government failed to acknowledge that all other previous initiatives have effectively reduced the smoking rate in New Zealand. The New Zealand Health Survey results show that the percentage of daily smokers in New Zealand is 6.8, which is down from the 8.6 percent reported last year and 16.4 percent in 2012. Costello further stated that, without the additional measures that the coalition government seeks to repeal, New Zealand will still be able to hit the Smokefree goal in 2025. To support the repeal, Costello reiterated that the coalition government is adopting a regulatory approach instead of a prohibitionist approach by providing smokers with sufficient assistance to quit smoking.
In opposing the amendment, opposition leader Chris Hipkins suggested that the amendment is just a way to fund tax cuts, at the expense of $5 billion medical expenses due to smoking-related diseases. Co-director of ASPIRE 2025, a University of Otago Research Centre, Janet Hoak also criticized the repeal, claiming that:
Repealing the legislation flies in the face of robust research evidence; it ignores measures strongly supported by Māori leaders and it will preserve health inequities. Large-scale clinical trials and modelling studies show the legislation would have rapidly increased the rates of quitting among smokers and made it much harder for young people to take up smoking.
Public Health Community Centre also published another briefing, rebutting the government’s claim that the repeal would reduce crime rate and enhance public safety. The briefing counter-argued that the substantially reduced nicotine limit would render smoked tobacco products in black markets undesirable and the reduction of outlet would enhance public safety by reducing ram raids.
