Smokefree 2025: Whanganui medical professionals welcome Action Plan announcement

New Zealand still has an adult smoking rate of 11.6 per cent. Photo / 123rf

Whanganui medical professionals have welcomed the Government's launch of Auahi Kore Aotearoa Mahere Rautaki 2025, the Smokefree 2025 Action Plan.

Dr John McMenamin, clinical director of the Whanganui Stop Smoking Service, said it would have a profound effect on the social and health wellbeing of the country's young people.

"An entire generation of young New Zealanders will come through without exposure to cigarettes," McMenamin said.

A bill is to be introduced in June next year with the aim of being passed by December, will will ban those aged 14 in 2023 from buying tobacco.

The new laws will also mean only tobacco products containing very low level nicotine will be able to be sold.

Whanganui medical officer of health Dr Patrick O'Connor said the announcement was "quite a breakthrough".

"This is a clear indication that we don't want people getting on the pathway to an addiction to smoking," O'Connor said.

"You need to put a strong emphasis on stopping young people from taking it up in the first place.

"It's a slow-moving intervention, but I guess it acknowledges that if you have already started [smoking] we're not going to cut off your supply completely, but we'll make it as difficult as possible for the next cohort coming through to become addicted."

Dr Patrick O'Connor says taxation of tobacco has been pushed "about as far as it can go". Photo / Bevan Conley

While smoking rates in general had come down in recent years, certain groups remained at risk, O'Connor said.

About 4500 to 5000 people die because of smoking tobacco every year in New Zealand.

"We have pushed taxation about as far as it can go I think," O'Connor said.

"It is mainly people on low incomes who still smoke, so you can only go down that road so far.

"That [taxation] has definitely had an effect, but I'm really pleased that some new approaches are being put in place."

Adults living in the most socioeconomically deprived areas are 4.5 times as likely to be smokers as adults in the least deprived areas.

Māori women have New Zealand's highest smoking rates at 32 per cent. Māori men also have a disproportionately higher current smoking rate of 25 per cent.

Overall, adult smokers (aged 15+) make up 11.6 per cent of the population, with higher smoking rates among men (12.2 per cent) than women (11 per cent).

O'Connor said there seemed to be a lot of strong anti-smoking attitudes in young people, and cigarettes didn't represent what they once did.

"Once it was seen as the rebellious thing to do, and now it's just seen as a bit lame."