Candy Blackwell had her first "puff" of a cigarette when she was 7 years old.
By 11, she was a "regular smoker", smoking at least one cigarette a day.
"By the time I was 14, I was buying my own smokes with my pocket money."
The Bay of Plenty woman
Smokefree Aotearoa 2025: How one Bay of Plenty woman quit smoking after starting at age 7
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Blackwell, 53, said on World Smokefree Day people could "celebrate those choices people have made around quitting smoking". She said New Zealand was making "amazing progress" towards its Smokefree Aotearoa goal.
Her journey to quit smoking inspired her to become a stop smoking practitioner for Hāpainga - a smoke-free support service based in the Bay of Plenty.
Blackwell was a "teen mum" and smoked during her first two pregnancies. Her mother also died from smoking-related lung cancer and had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
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"I didn't make a lot of good choices for those kids ... but I only knew what I knew at the time. In the 80s, it was still acceptable to smoke and drink while you were pregnant."
She then had another two children to a non-smoker and had to quit because "he wasn't going to have children to a smoker".
"Those two [children] have done better academically, they're taller, their health is better."
She said quitting smoking was "the ugliest thing in my life".
"I cried probably non-stop for a month."
This October, Blackwell would have been smoke-free for 22 years.
As a stop smoking practitioner for Hāpainga, Blackwell provides a "face-to-face service" to help people quit smoking.
"We meet them where it suits ... at home, the workplace, a cafe, a marae, on a sports field.
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"We can give the nicotine replacement therapy to them for free ... so we break down that barrier of cost.
"It gives us that opportunity to break down any barriers just by being ourselves with our clients and they can open up to us."
Tauranga resident Sue Eng, 61, went "cold turkey" and quit smoking when she was in her late thirties. She started at the age of 15 or 16, influenced by friends and family.
Apart from getting married and having children, quitting smoking was the "best thing I've ever done in my life".
But Eng said it was the "hardest thing" to quit.
"It was a lot about trying to see myself as a non-smoker because as a smoker you have a crowd of friends that are outside at a party and that's kind of your group ... and suddenly I was the one staying inside ... it was really tough."
Eng said she would go outside after dinner to have a cigarette.
"Often, [my son] would come to the door and he'd stand there and [have] tears running down his face because he didn't want me to smoke anymore.
"Suddenly, the quit pack turned up in the mail and he'd rung them ... and got them to send a quit pack.
"That really was it - that was the catalyst."
She set a date - June 1, 2000 - to stop smoking and she hasn't smoked since.
Her advice? "Don't start if you're a kid."
Waikato/Bay of Plenty Cancer Society health promotion co-ordinator Kate Mason said smoking caused more than 20 per cent of all cancer deaths every year.
Smoking was the "number one" cause of lung cancer but it could also cause cancer in the mouth, throat, bowel, kidney, liver, pancreas, stomach, bladder, cervix and ovaries.
Mason said New Zealand was "closing in" on the 2025 target for a Smokefree Aotearoa but there was "still a long way to go".
About 9.4 per cent of New Zealand adults still smoked every day – this was down from 18 per cent 10 years ago, Mason said.
"But for some communities, smoking rates remain high – as much as 24 per cent for Māori women.
"A Smokefree Aotearoa will go a long way towards reducing the impact and incidence of cancer on families."
According to the Ministry of Health, about 5000 people died each year in New Zealand because of smoking or second-hand smoke exposure. That was 13 people a day.
Ministry of Health statistics showed the current smoking rate of New Zealand adults was 10.9 per cent for 2020/21. For the previous year, it was 13.7 per cent.
A Ministry of Health spokesperson said there had been a decrease in smoking rates among Māori and Pacific peoples, but daily smoking prevalence rates among Māori were more than three times higher for non-Māori.
This disproportionately increased the risk to health from smoking-related diseases such as asthma for some groups.
"Reducing smoking rates amongst Māori and Pacific populations and pregnant women continues to be a priority for the Ministry and is embedded in the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 action plan."
The spokesperson said current tobacco control measures were largely focused on "changing individual behaviours".
While important, this approach had not worked for everyone and smoking rates had reduced faster among those with access to greater resources.
The onus of responsibility for reducing smoking rates should not sit with the individuals who smoked, the spokesperson said.
"The action plan includes legislative change which will focus on radically changing the smoking environment to make it easy for all New Zealanders to live Smokefree, by tackling everything about the product including where it is sold and what is in it."
