The Smokefree 2025 goal – to see fewer than 5% of New Zealanders smoke by the end of the year – is already a great success, but is it about to fail at the final hurdle?
New Zealand has made tremendous progress towards this goal, announced in 2010 as part of the Māori Affairs select committee inquiry into the tobacco industry and the effects of tobacco use on Māori.
Daily smoking rates have dropped almost 60% from 16.4% in 2011/12 to 6.9% in 2023/24. It means there are now 273,000 fewer smokers in New Zealand.
The improvement for Māori women in particular has been dramatic, falling from 40.6% in 2011/12 to 14.8% in 2023/2. It’s a stunning drop, but 14.8% who still smoke remains high. Māori women are by far the biggest group of New Zealanders still smoking.
Younger people have turned their backs on smoking: just 1% of 15-to 17-year-olds smoke, but the flip side is more than 15% now vape daily and 38% have tried vaping at least once. Based on overseas evidence it is likely most of these teens will soon be experiencing nicotine addiction, if not already.
So while they’ve quit smoking, sadly many of our young people haven’t been able to walk past the more than 1500 vape stores nationwide without going inside. And age restrictions – it’s been illegal to sell vapes to anyone under 18 since 2020 – haven’t stopped them.
But back to smoking. The goal is 5% across all population groups and we have that in our sights. But there’s still work to do.
According to Te Whatu Ora’s most recent report on the Smokefree NZ goal, released a few weeks ago, we need a further 82,000 Kiwis to quit smoking in the next 11 months if we are to hit 5%. That’s 244 a day until the end of the year.
Experts say it’s going to be close. Some health agencies say there’s no way we’ll get there. But about 80,000 people have quit in each of the past three years so perhaps there’s hope.
The problem is these last remaining smokers are digging their heels in.
They’re not helped by signals from the government. While the National-led coalition has written plans and will roll out more front-line ways of reducing smoking this year, it controversially repealed policies Labour put in place.
It included banning cigarette sales to anyone born after January 1, 2009, removing nicotine from cigarettes and drastically reducing the number of sales outlets. It would have seen generations of genuine smoke-free Kiwis. But the new government refused to go that far so all these well-intentioned measures were dumped.
It was one of the surprise policies announced after the coalition negotiations and continues to puzzle – and anger – many Kiwis including me. Why make smoking easier and more available? Tax revenue? Yes, of course. But the health outcomes are dreadful. It appears to me small-dairy owners and the tobacco industry somehow won this government over.
Announcing plans like this before an election would have been a hard sell. Much easier to slip it in after coalition talks ended. It’s an insult to all those who have worked night and day to reach the 2025 goal and seems like a policy designed to keep a “death industry” alive for longer.
We know the government’s earnings from cigarette sales help pay for tax cuts, but what an unprincipled thing to do. Isn’t it tantamount to helping someone die earlier? There should be no excuses – and this government should now work damned hard for the next 11 months to achieve our smoke-free targets.
What follows is a story about the beginnings of the Smokefree 2025 goal, and why I believe contemporary politicians have failed their predecessors.
The recently deceased former Māori Party co-leader Dame Tariana Turia and MP Hone Harawira pushed the smoke-free message from about 2005 and their stance caught my attention. Brave, I thought, because Māori were their target and also their voters.
Which brings me to May 31, 2006. I’ll always remember this.
It was not just World Smokefree Day. It was the launch of TOA – Tobacco out of NZ – and guest speaker Harawira let rip, leading a brutal verbal assault on the tobacco companies. Referring to them as murderers, he said we needed to ban smoking completely and kick them out of our country by 2010 at the latest.
His speech continued:
We don’t smoke this shit – we sell it. We reserve the right to sell it, to the young, the poor, the black and the stupid.”
Such are the words of the tobacco industry.
Well – today we launch a campaign to rid our country of the bastards who think like this, the companies they work for and the poison they sell us. Thank you all for coming.
As a journalist I was excited. The headline and angle were strong. I recall ringing the news boss at 3 News and saying, “I have our lead story”. That usually meant the speaker phone went on and other producers huddled around as I gave my best two-minute pitch as to why my story should lead the 6pm bulletin. To be fair to them they usually granted me my wish; after all I was solving a problem.
At his constructive best, there was no other MP like Harawira. He spoke a language we all understood in that he was direct – no pussyfooting around. And he was genuine in his hatred for those “bastards”.
By 2012, Harawira’s work had become officially Smokefree NZ 2025 and there he was, unapologetically targeting his own people telling them he was about to take away what they were addicted to.
More than a decade later we’re close to our smoke-free target but the hard graft that was needed last year didn’t happen and momentum stalled.
Smoke-free providers told Associate Minister for Health Casey Costello that some things fell away in the last year, most importantly referrals to their services from others in the health system, and that the last remaining smokers are stubbornly holding out.
Given this, I believe Te Pati Māori’s refusal to work with the coalition government was short-sighted and limiting.
All that hard work from Harawira, Dame Tariana and co could have been honoured by Te Pati Māori being willing to work with the National-led government on the final push to make New Zealand smoke-free – or at least down to 5% – this year.
