A fresh battle has erupted over New Zealand’s smokefree strategy, with a tobacco harm-reduction advocacy group accusing Health Coalition Aotearoa of turning tobacco and vaping policy into an election campaign issue while overlooking the country’s dramatic long-term fall in smoking.
The Coalition of Asia Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates — CAPHRA — is pushing back against calls for tougher tobacco and vaping controls, arguing New Zealand should protect access to regulated vaping for adults trying to quit smoking while putting greater enforcement pressure on retailers selling illegally and the illicit tobacco market.
The intervention follows the release of Health Coalition Aotearoa’s election policy survey, which asked incumbent political parties about 12 public-health priorities covering tobacco, alcohol, unhealthy food and public-health infrastructure.
HCA reported strong support for its priorities from the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, while Labour strongly supported its three tobacco priorities. National and New Zealand First did not respond to the survey or attend HCA’s August prevention forum.
CAPHRA argues that means the survey should not be interpreted as representing a political consensus on the future of tobacco and vaping regulation.
Smoking has more than halved
At the centre of CAPHRA’s argument is one of the biggest changes in New Zealand public health over the past decade.
Official Ministry of Health figures show 16.4 percent of adults smoked daily in 2011/12.
By 2024/25 that had fallen to 6.8 percent.
The estimated number of daily smokers nearly halved over the same period, falling from around 572,000 to 294,000.
That is an enormous long-term reduction.
But there is an important qualification.
The latest Ministry of Health report says the national smoking rate has effectively plateaued at around 6.8 percent for three years, meaning New Zealand remains above its Smokefree 2025 goal of getting daily smoking below five percent across all population groups.
CAPHRA Executive Coordinator Nancy Loucas argues the long-term decline should be recognised when considering whether additional vaping restrictions are justified.
The organisation supports a harm-reduction approach that maintains regulated access to vaping products for adults wanting an alternative to smoking.
Vaping has moved in the opposite direction
While smoking has fallen dramatically, vaping has increased.
The Ministry of Health says 11.7 percent of adults were daily vapers in 2024/25, compared with just 0.9 percent when vaping was first measured in 2015/16.
That equates to an estimated 509,000 daily vapers.
The Ministry cautions against assuming that the increase in vaping directly caused the reduction in smoking simply because the two trends occurred alongside one another.
It says survey data can demonstrate that vaping increased while smoking declined in some groups, but cannot by itself establish cause and effect.
That distinction sits at the heart of the current debate.
Harm-reduction advocates see vaping as an important alternative for adult smokers.
Public-health advocates concerned about vaping point particularly to uptake among younger people and the risk of creating another generation dependent on nicotine.
For Māori, the numbers tell a more complicated story
The national average also masks major inequities.
Latest official figures put daily smoking among Māori adults at 15 percent, more than twice the national rate of 6.8 percent.
Pacific adults were at 10.3 percent, compared with 5.7 percent for European and Other adults and 4.5 percent for Asian adults.
At the same time, Māori also record the country’s highest daily vaping rate.
In 2024/25, 27.5 percent of Māori adults reported vaping daily, compared with 11.7 percent across the overall adult population.
Pacific daily vaping was 20 percent.
That creates a difficult policy question for Māori health.
Any approach needs to continue driving down a smoking rate that remains substantially higher for Māori while also considering what high vaping rates could mean for rangatahi and future generations.
CAPHRA wants enforcement rather than another regulatory layer
CAPHRA says concerns about young people accessing vaping products are legitimate but argues the answer should primarily be stronger enforcement of existing age-of-sale and retailer requirements.
Its concern is that further restrictions on the regulated market could also make vaping less accessible to adult smokers using it as a quitting tool.
The organisation is calling on political parties to maintain New Zealand’s regulated vaping framework while putting additional enforcement resources into retailer compliance and illicit tobacco and vaping supply.
The Ministry of Health itself continues to recognise less harmful alternatives such as vaping as one of the practical tools available to smokers attempting to quit, while New Zealand has also strengthened vaping laws intended to reduce youth access.
Australia becomes the warning
CAPHRA is pointing across the Tasman as evidence of what can happen when illicit tobacco markets become established.
Australian Taxation Office estimates previously put tobacco duty lost through illicit products reaching the Australian market at A$2.7 billion in 2022/23.
More recent Australian Border Force figures demonstrate the extraordinary scale of enforcement activity.
During the 2025/26 financial year, Australian authorities seized more than 2,300 tonnes of illicit tobacco and 13.2 million illicit vaping products across the border continuum.
At the border alone, authorities seized more than 2.2 billion cigarette sticks, with estimated tobacco duty evasion exceeding A$4.7 billion.
Australian authorities say organised crime groups are heavily involved in the illicit market and have significantly expanded enforcement efforts.
CAPHRA argues New Zealand needs to ensure tobacco and vaping policy does not unintentionally strengthen an illegal market.
Two different visions of prevention
The dispute ultimately reflects two different approaches to reducing nicotine-related harm.
Health Coalition Aotearoa is advocating stronger population-level prevention policies and has identified tobacco controls among its election priorities.
CAPHRA wants policymakers to place greater weight on harm reduction for people who already smoke, preserve regulated vaping alternatives and focus enforcement on illegal sales.
Both debates intersect with another reality.
Smoking remains one of New Zealand’s leading preventable causes of health loss, and despite the extraordinary reduction over the past decade, the decline has stalled nationally.
For Māori, the challenge is even greater.
A national daily smoking rate of 6.8 percent represents substantial progress.
A Māori rate of 15 percent shows the job is far from finished.
Election puts smokefree strategy back on the table
With Election 2026 approaching, tobacco and vaping policy is again becoming a political dividing line.
The question for parties is no longer simply whether smoking should continue to fall — there is broad agreement on that objective.
The argument is increasingly about how New Zealand gets there.
Should the country impose stronger restrictions on tobacco and vaping?
Should it preserve vaping as an accessible harm-reduction pathway for adult smokers while concentrating enforcement on youth sales?
And how does Aotearoa reduce Māori smoking rates without replacing one form of long-term nicotine dependence with another?
After more than a decade of dramatic progress, the next stage of New Zealand’s smokefree journey could prove considerably harder than the first.
#CAPHRA #HealthCoalitionAotearoa #NancyLoucas #Smoking #Vaping #Smokefree #SmokefreeAotearoa #TobaccoHarmReduction #HarmReduction #TobaccoControl #VapeRegulation #YouthVaping #MāoriHealth #HauoraMāori #MāoriSmoking #WhānauMāori #RangatahiMāori #PublicHealth #Nicotine #IllicitTobacco #Election2026 #HealthPolicy #NZPolitics #MāoriPolitics #TeAoMāori #Aotearoa #WaateaNews #RadioWaatea
