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New Zealand Passed a Generational Smoking Ban in 2022, But Repealed It Before It Went Into Effect

Eva Corlett, reporting for The Guardian in 2023:

New Zealand’s new government will scrap the country’s world-leading law to ban smoking for future generations to help pay for tax cuts — a move that public health officials believe will cost thousands of lives and be “catastrophic” for Māori communities.

In 2022 the country passed pioneering legislation which introduced a steadily rising smoking age to stop those born after January 2009 from ever being able to legally buy cigarettes. The law was designed to prevent thousands of smoking-related deaths and save the health system billions of dollars. [...]

The laws were due to be implemented from July 2024. But as part of its coalition agreement with populist New Zealand First, National agreed to repeal the amendments, including “removing requirements for de-nicotisation, removing the reduction in retail outlets and the generation ban”.

It’s interesting that this law passed in the first place, but I would argue that there are no lessons to be learned from it given that it was repealed before it ever went into effect. And it seemingly was repealed solely along left/right political lines after a change in the country’s parliament, not because the public had turned against this specific not-yet-in-effect law.

★ Friday, 24 April 2026