Eva Corlett, reporting for The Guardian in 2023:
New Zealand’s new government will scrap the country’s
world-leading law to ban smoking for future generations to help
pay for tax cuts — a move that public health officials believe
will cost thousands of lives and be “catastrophic” for Māori
communities.In 2022 the country passed pioneering legislation which introduced
a steadily rising smoking age to stop those born after January
2009 from ever being able to legally buy cigarettes. The law was
designed to prevent thousands of smoking-related deaths and save
the health system billions of dollars. […]The laws were due to be implemented from July 2024. But as part of
its coalition agreement with populist New Zealand First, National
agreed to repeal the amendments, including “removing requirements
for de-nicotisation, removing the reduction in retail outlets and
the generation ban”.
