In 2022, it’s safe to say that the consequences of smoking are now well known: cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung diseases, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease including the likes of emphysema and chronic bronchitis. It seems the health impacts of cigarette smoking are endless, and yet as anyone who has taken it up can attest, quitting is particularly difficult. To spare young people the challenge, the New Zealand government is looking to ban anyone born after 2008 from buying cigarettes.
In what’s being called the ‘tobacco endgame’ law, the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill was delivered to New Zealand Parliament this week and will now go to the Health Select Committee for review before being assessed in the House late this year.
Outlining a number of measures intended to reduce smoking, the bill outlines drastically reducing the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. But key to the bill, is its focus on creating a ‘smokefree generation.’ Under such measures, it will look to steadily raise the legal age to purchase cigarettes, effectively ensuring that anyone born in 2009 onwards will never be allowed to buy cigarettes.
According to Ayesha Verrall, New Zealand’s associate health minister, the fact tobacco companies have been allowed to recruit new customers for generations is “disgusting and it is bizarre.” As Verrall added, “We have more regulations in this country on the safety of the sale of a sandwich than on a cigarette.”
The landmark ruling would save countless individuals from the challenge of having to quit something that many have described as being one of the most addictive substances. As reported by the American Heart Association, smoking is the world’s leading preventable cause of death. More than 1.1 billion people smoke worldwide according to the World Health Organisation, with countless people joining the number each day.
According to Dr Neil Benowitz, a nicotine researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, nicotine is “just as hard, or harder, to quit than heroin…but people don’t recognise that.” Benowitz adds, “Every drug of abuse, including nicotine, releases dopamine, which makes it pleasurable to use. And when you stop smoking, you have a deficiency of dopamine release, which causes a state of dysphoria: you feel anxious or depressed.”
While it certainly presents an interesting measure in how to effectively reduce the rate of smoking, it appears Australia has no plans to follow suit.
