NEW ZEALAND’S WORLD-LEADING PLAN TO STAMP OUT SMOKING

New Zealand is about to pass world-first legislation which, campaigners hope, will almost “eliminate” smoking in the nation by 2025.

NCD Alliance Scotland chair David Mccolgan, says:

“New Zealand’s ambition is refreshing in this space and we’d encourage the Scottish Government to take an equally ambitious and innovative approach to tackle deep-rooted issues in Scotland.”

The three key elements of New Zealand’s Smokefree 2025 Action Plan are: dramatically reducing nicotine in tobacco products; radically cutting the number of retail outlets selling tobacco, from 6,000 to around 500; and raising the age at which it’s legal to be sold tobacco by one year every year, meaning those born after January 1, 2009, will never be old enough legally to be sold cigarettes.

The action plan aims to cut smoking rates to below five per cent by 2025, from 13 per cent now. That is for all population groups, including Maori, among whom smoking rates are substantially higher.

Public health expert Prof Richard Edwards is co-director of the Aspire 2025 research centre at the University of Otago, focused on smoking reduction policy. He believes the measures will have a “profound” impact. He says: “This plan gives us a real chance to pretty much eliminate smoking and do it equitably across the whole of society.”

Edwards, a speaker at Holyrood’s recent Health & Social Care Festival, explains that “denicotinisation” of cigarettes and slashing retail availability are likely to have the biggest immediate effect.

He says: “Taking the nicotine out makes cigarettes non-addictive and there are far fewer places selling them so they are much more difficult to get hold of. We think the uptake of smoking will massively reduce.”

He adds: “What we’re addressing is that we’ve left both the retail availability and the design of the product up to the industry.

“A cigarette looks like quite a simple product but it’s not. The industry has been able to make a high-nicotine cigarette, it’s got sugars in it and flavours in the smoke, they add ammonia and stuff to make the smoke a different ph and it’s all to make the nicotine more available and the smoke less harsh.

“We’re saying that we shouldn’t allow that. This product kills people.”

Tobacco can be selectively bred or genetically modified to reduce nicotine levels.

Randomised controlled trials have shown that smokers on low nicotine cigarettes dislike them, smoke less and are more likely to quit. Edwards rejects claims that people will smoke more or draw harder to get their nicotine hit, describing the new cigarettes as “useless” from a nicotine point of view. Modelling suggests denicotinisation alone will drive a “dramatic and rapid” smoking reduction.

Cutting the number of retailers selling tobacco is expected to help further, reducing impulse purchasing by former smokers, helping prevent young people taking up smoking and requiring much more effort for smokers to access tobacco, hopefully triggering many to quit.

Raising the legal age for tobacco sales continually will make tobacco hard for young people to access (those currently aged 14 and under will never be able to buy it) and avoids inadvertently creating a “rite of passage” effect around buying cigarettes legally at a set age. It’s also intended to send a strong signal that tobacco is toxic.

None of these measures have been tried by a national government before and Edwards pays tribute to the leadership of the Maori community in pushing for them. The legislation has had its first reading and is currently at committee stage in the New Zealand parliament. It has strong support from MPS. Edwards anticipates that the tobacco industry will strongly oppose the plans, but is hopeful that obstructions can be overcome.

Scotland has a slightly higher population than New Zealand but almost twice as many tobacco retailers and a higher smoking rate at 17 per cent.

Edwards says: “In Scotland you have been in the vanguard [of anti-smoking measures], you have a smokefree goal and a really strong equity focus. You’ve got a much higher smoking prevalence than we have and it’s killing disadvantaged people in large numbers.

“Scotland does tend to lead the way in the UK. This could be another thing.

“I’m really hoping it sets a precedent.” •