July 27, 2022
Smokefree Bill gets first reading
Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall says without the steps in the new Smokefree Environments Bill it will be decades before Māori smoking rates fall below 5 per cent.
The Smoke-free Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill passed its first reading yesterday.
It will cut the number of retail outlets able to sell tobacco, reduce the amount of nicotine in smoked tobacco products and ban sales to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.
Dr Verral says people living in areas where tobacco is readily available are at the greatest risk of relapse, and there are currently more smoked tobacco retailers clustered in low-income communities.
Additional measures aimed at meeting the target of a smoke-free Aotearoa by 2025 include extra money for health promotion programmes, scaling up stop-smoking services, and creating a tobacco regulator to ensure compliance with Smokefree regulations.
A new quit campaign will roll out later this year.