Emphasis on rising Māori & Pasifika smoking rates ahead of 2025.
New Zealand’s smoke-free deadline is fast approaching and efforts are intensifying to make sure some of the communities most affected by tobacco addiction are not left behind.
Smokefree Aotearoa 2025′s goal is for fewer than five per cent of New Zealanders to be smokers by the end of 2025, just two years and five months away. Only around 8 per cent of all Kiwis are daily smokers, down from 16.4 per cent in 2011–12, but statistics show Māori and Pacific rates are 3.4 and 2.6 times higher respectively — something the Breakfree to Smokefree campaign aims to tackle.
The new Te Whatu Ora (Health New Zealand)/Te Aka Whai Ora (Māori Health Authority) campaign shines a light on how tobacco use has been normalised and glamourised over generations. It uses characters Eru and Sina to encourage conversation around how tobacco companies work to keep smokers addicted, and that people who smoke can take back their power and make their own decision to quit.
Jason Alexander, interim chief executive officer of Māori public health agency Hāpai Te Hauora, says in many whānau, tobacco companies have created a cycle of intergenerational addiction which can be hard to break.
“Smoking permeated our culture 100 years ago and has persevered through its addictiveness. It became part of what we did, and we’re still struggling to break away from it,” he says. “So it’s about having that conversation: ‘why?’. It’s not part of our culture: tobacco companies wanted to profit so they infiltrated cigarettes into our lives.
“We all like to think we’re making informed decisions and people have access to information about the negative effects, but they are still being targeted and manipulated by organisations that want to profit at the expense of our health.”
Edward Cowley, Tala Pasifika Lead for National Tobacco Control Advocacy, says the campaign aims to impart a sense of individual power and choice to smokers who might be struggling to kick the habit, due to how smoking has been normalised in society.
“Tobacco companies want lifelong users of its products. People don’t realise they’ve been duped into tobacco use — a lot of the decision has been taken away from them.”
However, he says, knowledge can encourage change: “Once people take on board the information that it’s not their fault they smoke, and come to the realisation that there are forces at play that encourage their tobacco use, that supports them to act in the opposite way.
“It gives them more motivation to say: ‘I don’t want to smoke any more, I’ve got better things I can use my hard-earned money on.’”
Both Alexander and Cowley have personal stories from within their own whānau/aiga which illustrate historic and contemporary attitudes towards tobacco use for Māori and Pasifika.
“Both my parents smoked. I’m one of eight kids, and at one stage six of us smoked —for us it was natural,” Cowley says. “But my father died from lung cancer as a direct result of smoking, at the age of 63. After his funeral we decided, as a family, to stop smoking together.”
“Now our family looks quite different — we had 64 people at a family reunion recently, not one person in our aiga smokes. That means our kids and grandkids don’t see it every day and it’s not normal for them, which is a blessing.”
For Alexander, the wake-up call for his whānau to break an intergenerational habit came when his grandmother had a heart attack in her 60s, which encouraged her other family members, addicted since childhood, to finally give up. “That’s the reason my Nan is still around, at 87,” he says.
The Breakfree to Smokefree campaign also aims to publicise upcoming major changes to legislation — including from January 1, 2027, the prohibition of sale of tobacco products to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009. This will effectively create a smokefree generation of young people who will never legally be able to buy tobacco products.
“That’s going to be a game changer for our young people in terms of access to tobacco,” Cowley says.
“However, while many young people today are either choosing not to start smoking, there is a middle-aged group of heavily addicted smokers who need help to kick at this addiction. “It’s those people we need to work with to lower smoking prevalence and leave tobacco behind for life,” he adds.
Alexander says while he’s confident that, as a country, we will reach the Smokefree 2025 target, “it’s important we don’t leave anyone behind in our rush to get there. Campaigns like this help those battling addiction and lead them in the direction of help and support and let them know we haven’t forgotten about them.”
If you want to quit smoking, there are lots of free support services available. Visit Breakfreetosmokefree