New Zealand Ban On Tobacco: Smoke-free Generation in Making
Smoking can cause cancer, diabetes, strokes, lung diseases, and other chronic diseases with an increased risk of certain other problems as well, including TB and eye diseases. New Zealand has moved ahead with proposing the world‘s first tobacco law in bidding to create a smoke-free generation. A smoke-free generation or tobacco-free generation advocates laws stating that the sale and supply of tobacco to any individual that is born after a certain year will be prohibited. New Zealand has taken an important step in order to prohibit its population from smoking.
New Zealand officially announced a unique plan that would end up smoking in their country. A statement given by New Zealand in regards to banning smoking states that any individual within the age of 14 years or younger would not be allowed to purchase or smoke cigarettes for the entire lifetime. Furthermore, it was stated that New Zealand would increase the minimum age for you to smoke and purchase cigarettes every year from 2023, which is the year when the policy would be implemented. The current smoking rate of the country’s adults is 13.4% in 2019 and 2020, which decreased by 3.2% in the years 2014 and 2015 and 4.8% in 2011 and 2012. One in every eight adults, which implies almost close to half a million people in New Zealand, were regular smokers. It was known from the census in 2018 that the regular smoking habit of people aged 15 years and above decreased to almost 13.2% in 2019.
In the above-mentioned graphical representation of the share of current smokers in New Zealand in the year 2021 by age, it can be observed that the current scenario of smokers in New Zealand was not very fatal, and few changes would change the population of Newzealand completely. Furthermore, it can be observed that the average percentage of smokers has been constant since 2019, with a slight decrease every year. Through the graphical representation, it can also be said that the country will thrive in its policy as there are not many smokers under the age of seventeen.
New Zealand believes in keeping their people as a priority and hence believes that proposing a tobacco-free policy would benefit families and communities of New Zealand. Along with mentioning the age group for which the policy was made, New Zealand also mentioned measures to make smoking unaffordable and inaccessible so that the population aged 15 and above could also be intelligent enough to stay away from smoking. The policy proposed by New Zealand has acted like a historic day for making people realize their health.
New Zealand has invested a lot in controlling the smoking habits of its people by opting for a control program with a budget of $61.7 million in various fields such as mass media campaigns, health promotion, leadership, and advocacy, innovation fund, public health units, stop smoking medicines, and Ministry of health non departmental spend. Hence, it has helped a lot in controlling the smoking habits of the people in New Zealand.
