The bill to repeal Labour's anti-smoking legislation has now been introduced in the House. Photo / 123rf
The bill to repeal Labour's anti-smoking legislation has now been introduced in the House. Photo / 123rf
University researchers consider the Government’s repeal of world-leading anti-smoking legislation to be lacking logic and evidence as the repeal bill lands in the House.
The Government introduced the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill this afternoon, alongside another bill repealing the Māori Health Authority – both of which were items in the coalition’s 100-day plan.
The Government did so under urgency, meaning the bills will be rushed through the legislative process as the 100-day deadline of March 8 nears.
New Zealand’s world-leading anti-smoking legislation was brought in by the previous Labour Government and would have established a smokefree generation in which no one born on or after January 1, 2009, would ever be able to buy tobacco products.
As the Government bill was introduced, researchers from Otago University’s Aspire Aotearoa Research Centre released a statement saying the repeal was “shameful” and didn’t honour the coalition’s commitment to take an evidence-based approach to decision-making.
“Repealing the legislation flies in the face of robust research evidence; it ignores measures strongly supported by Māori leaders and it will preserve health inequities,” centre co-director Professor Janet Hoek said.
“Large-scale clinical trials and modelling studies show the legislation would have rapidly increased the rates of quitting among smokers and made it much harder for young people to take up smoking.”
Associate Health Minister Casey Costello, who is leading the repeal, cited survey results from December last year that showed 6.8 per cent of Kiwis smoked daily, which had fallen from 8.6 per cent the previous year.
In a statement, she argued that Smokefree 2025′s target of getting smoking rates for all population groups under 5 per cent could be achieved if current declines continued.
Associate Health Minister Casey Costello maintains the Smokefree 2025 goals can still be achieved. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Hoek disagreed: “We know from robust modelling that the business-as-usual approach the Government wants to revert to will not see smoking prevalence among Māori fall below 5 per cent for several decades.”
This echoed advice received by Costello from the Ministry of Health, which said the goal wouldn’t be achieved until 2061 without Labour’s anti-smoking legislation.
That advice, reported by RNZ, also included how Labour’s legislation was predicted to save more than $5 billion in health spending and nearly $6b in increased productivity over the lifetimes of New Zealanders alive in 2020.
Costello described Labour’s anti-smoking laws as an “untested regime” that ignored the success of current cessation initiatives and the “potential downside of taking a prohibitionist approach for smokers, or for retailers and crime”.
That was a reference to the Government’s claim that Labour’s laws would have expanded the black market and led to criminals targeting the reduced number of stores offering tobacco products.
However, as RNZ reported, health officials had said that raising such concerns was a common tobacco industry tactic and that current evidence pointed to a diminishing illicit trade.
Costello said she would soon take to Cabinet a “package of measures” designed to help people quit smoking as well as tightening vaping regulations to prevent access for young people.
Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins posed several questions to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon relating to the smoking law repeal. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Labour leader Chris Hipkins used today’s Question Time to push Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on whether Costello had brought her recent advice to Cabinet.
Luxon didn’t give a specific answer. Hipkins also asked whether Luxon stood by a comment he made in 2022 indicating his support for the anti-smoking legislation. Luxon maintained his Government was committed to reducing smoking rates.
Act health spokesman Todd Stephenson contested the assertion that New Zealand’s tobacco black market was shrinking, citing an RNZ report in February which quoted New Zealand Customs data that found officials seized 8.5 million illegal cigarettes in 2023, compared with 5m in 2022.
Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the NZ Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.
