New Zealand will ban the sale of tobacco to its next generation, in a bid to eventually phase out smoking.
Anyone born after 2008 will not be able to buy cigarettes or tobacco products in their lifetime, under a law expected to be enacted next year.
âWe want to make sure young people never start smoking,â Health Minister Dr. Ayesha Verall said.
The move is part of a sweeping crackdown on smoking announced by New Zealandâs Health Ministry yesterday.
Doctors and other health experts in the country have welcomed the âworld-leadingâ reforms, which will reduce access to tobacco and restrict nicotine levels in cigarettes.
âIt will help people quit or switch to less harmful products, and make it much less likely that young people get addicted to nicotine,â said Prof. Janet Hook from the University of Otago.
The crackdown has been met with mixed reactions.
âI reckon itâs a good move, really,â one man told Reuters news agency.
âBecause right now thereâs a lot of young kids walking around with smokes in their mouth. Public are asking how theyâre getting these smokes.
âAnd itâs also good for myself too because I can save more money.â
However, others have warned that the move may create a black market for tobacco â something the health ministryâs official impact statement does acknowledge, noting âcustoms will need more resource to enforce border controlâ.
âThis is all 100 percent theory and 0 percent substance,â Sunny Kaushal, chairman of the Dairy and Business Owners Group, a lobby group for local convenience stores, told New Zealandâs Stuff news site.
âThereâs going to be a crime wave. Gangs and criminals will fill the gapâ
New Zealand is determined to achieve a national goal of reducing its national smoking rate to 5 percent by 2025, with the aim of eventually eliminating it altogether.
At the moment, 13 percent of New Zealandâs adults smoke, with the rate much higher among the indigenous Maori population, where it soars to almost a third. Maori also suffer a higher rate of disease and death.
New Zealandâs health ministry says smoking causes one in four cancers and remains the leading cause of preventable death for its five million strong population.
The industry has been the target of legislators for more than a decade now.
As part of the crackdown announced yesterday, the government also introduced major tobacco controls, including significantly restricting where cigarettes can be sold to remove them from supermarkets and corner stores.
The number of shops authorised to sell cigarettes will be drastically reduced to under 500 from about 8,000 now, officials say.
In recent years, vaping â smoking e-cigarettes which produce a vapour that also delivers nicotine â has become far more popular among younger generations than cigarettes.
New Zealand health authorities warn however, that vaping is not harmless.
Researchers have found hazardous, cancer-causing agents in e-cigarette liquids as well.
But in 2017 the country adopted vaping as a pathway to help smokers quit tobacco.
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All credit to the government for the backbone . This will never happen in Sri Lanka