Creating a generation where no one smokes anymore, that’s what New Zealand wants. To achieve this, young people who turn 14 next year will never be able to legally buy cigarettes again, announced the country today. The age limit for tobacco increases by one year each year from the year they turn 18.
Over time, for example, fewer and fewer people will be able to buy cigarettes and tobacco will be phased out step by step. In 2040, for example, only people older than 32 will be able to buy cigarettes.
“A milestone”, says Marc Willemsen of the Trimbos Institute. “This is the first country to take such a measure. In Madagascar, such a plan has failed in parliament,” says Willemsen, who is also professor by special appointment of tobacco control at Maastricht University. Parliament in New Zealand has yet to consider the plan, but that appears to be a formality. The ruling Labor Party has a majority.
Willemsen hopes that other countries will be inspired by New Zealand. He calls the plan an important signal. By 2025, the government wants less than 5 percent of the population to smoke. The percentage of smokers has already fallen to about 13 percent. “This indicates New Zealand that the final phase has arrived to achieve that smoke-free generation.”
Age from 18 to 21
Anton Kunst, professor of social epidemiology at Amsterdam UMC, also understands that New Zealand will take such a measure: “It will certainly be effective.” The longer you can put off young people starting to smoke, the less likely they will start. “Most young people start experimenting with smoking around the age of fourteen. Then it can take a few years before they become addicted. Around the age of sixteen or seventeen they smoke daily.”
However, Kunst does not necessarily see any point in introducing the measure here as well: “Prohibiting certain generations of something may be a tricky point from a legal point of view. That tends to be discriminatory.” Raising the age at which you can buy tobacco from 18 to 21 is more feasible as far as Art is concerned: “That has already happened in a number of American states.”
New Zealanders react to the smoking ban for young generations:
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