Five ways to get Aotearoa back on the smokefree track

With the election looming, New Zealand voters face a question that once seemed settled: does the country still want a smokefree future?

New Zealand’s Smokefree 2025 goal, set in 2011, once inspired countries across the globe. New smokefree legislation was introduced in 2023 that aimed to accelerate progress towards the goal by banning the sale of tobacco to anyone born after January 1, 2009; reducing the number of outlets able to sell tobacco; and removing 95 percent of nicotine from cigarettes.

Within a year, what had been one of the world’s most ambitious tobacco-control programmes was repealed before it could take effect. Since then, smoking prevalence has plateaued and inequities between groups have persisted.

Our failure to achieve Smokefree 2025 reminds us just how challenging it will be to reduce smoking prevalence to below five percent for all New Zealanders without measures that fundamentally change the tobacco-control system.

The policies advocated by Health Coalition Aotearoa’s smokefree expert group, which we co-lead, would help put the country back on course for a smokefree future.

Policy 1: Introduce a nicotine retailer licensing scheme

Currently, dairies and petrol stations can sell one of the most lethal products – tobacco – without a licence. A licensing system covering all tobacco and vape retailers would mean, for example, if they sold illicit tobacco or cigarettes or vapes to under-18s, they could lose their licence.

It could also enable a ‘sinking lid’ where sellers would compete for fewer licences over time, with new licences issued only to retailers located away from schools and early childhood centres.

This restores, in a workable form, the retail reduction provisions repealed in 2024.

Policy 2: Restore the tax on tobacco in heated tobacco products

The current Government halved excise duty on heated tobacco products, a decision that benefited a single global tobacco company, Philip Morris International, and which lacked any credible public health evidence of the benefits of doing so.

Reducing tax on any tobacco product risks signalling that it carries little health risk.

It also weakens one of the most effective tobacco-control tools, the important role of taxes in discouraging people trying these products. We would like to see that levy restored.

Policy 3: Reduce the nicotine level in all tobacco products

Trials show that reducing the nicotine levels in cigarettes dramatically reduces addictiveness and helps people to quit smoking. It’s also pro-equity.

Australia’s experience with a rapidly growing illicit tobacco market (which coincided with increased tobacco controls) shows that changes to the tobacco and nicotine system should be introduced carefully, and a future low nicotine tobacco policy would need to be supported by substantially strengthened enforcement capacity, better border controls, and licensing infrastructure.

A licensed, shrinking retail network is the foundation on which stronger product regulation, including a reduction in nicotine levels in tobacco products below the addiction threshold, could be built.

This is sequencing, not retreat. This would not be abandoning the repealed legislation; it would be rebuilding the strategies on firmer ground.

Policy 4: Prevent industry interference

When the Coalition Government came in and ministers were sworn in at Parliament, members of the tobacco industry were there, having their photographs taken with politicians.

The movement of former politicians into key tobacco industry roles, combined with recent regulatory changes that in effect cut tax by 50 percent for heated tobacco products, has raised legitimate questions about the extent of tobacco industry access to decision-makers.

New Zealand signed the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2003. This obliges us to protect health policy from tobacco industry interference, but we have never properly embedded that obligation in law.

Whether or not industry influence affected specific decisions, such as the 2024 repeal of Smoke Free legislation, New Zealand lacks the transparency mechanisms needed to reassure the public that health policy is being made independently.

At present, there is no legal mechanism to systematically monitor tobacco industry influence on government policy. Addressing that should be a priority.

It is not just a tobacco issue. The same concerns apply across a range of sectors.

Many jurisdictions overseas have transparency measures in place, in which lobbyists must register meetings, record who they meet, what they talked about and provide clear details of those interactions.

Policy 5: Eliminate inequities in smoking and vaping prevalence

Seven percent of Kiwis smoke, higher than the target of five percent by 2025. But 15 percent of Māori and 10 percent of Pacific people smoke.

Tobacco is a leading driver of the gap in life expectancy between Māori and non-Māori, cutting lives short through cancer, heart disease and respiratory illness.

This reflects decades of targeted industry marketing, and dense retail availability in lower-income communities; tobacco outlets cluster in the neighbourhoods that can least afford the harm.

Which is another reason why the repealed measures mattered so much: modelling showed the low nicotine policy would have closed health gaps for Māori faster than any tobacco policy in our history.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations – the Crown’s duty to actively protect Māori health – belong at the centre of this debate. Restoring these policies is not just good public health; it is a matter of honouring commitments and justice.

Where do the political parties stand?

Labour, Te Pāti Māori and the Green Party broadly support stronger tobacco control measures, including licensing, controls over tobacco industry interference, reducing inequities and greater support for smoking cessation services.

ACT health spokesperson Todd Stephenson said the party was open to a common licensing regime and expanded cessation services. At an HCA political panel, he said he wasn’t opposed to lobbying reform but cited technicalities as a barrier.

NZ First’s associate health minister Casey Costello, who championed the heated tobacco excise tax cut, opposes reversing it, but has signalled support for a common licensing policy for tobacco products.

National stands by the current Government’s record and policies.

The bottom line

Smoking remains a leading cause of preventable death in Aotearoa. A law repeal in 2024 derailed progress towards the Smokefree 2025 goal, with the heaviest cost falling on Māori and Pacific communities. The policies outlined above would get New Zealand back on track.

The election offers an opportunity to decide whether New Zealand remains committed to a smokefree future. And so find out which of our political parties are willing to adopt the policies needed to achieve it.