[News] New Zealand's ambitious anti-tobacco plan that seeks to ban young people from buying cigarettes for their entire lives

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The New Zealand government announced an ambitious plan to prevent tobacco use in the country's next generations.

The plan, which includes a bill that the government hopes will be approved by the assembly in 2022, seeks to prohibit people who were born in the island nation after 2008 from buying cigarettes or tobacco products.

"We want to make sure young people never start smoking," said Dr Ayesha Verall, New Zealand Health Minister.

The measure is part of a widespread effort in New Zealand to reduce the smoking rate, from 13% of the adult po[CENSORED]tion to 5%, by 2025. This as a first step before reaching the ultimate goal of eradicating the use of tobacco definitely.

 

Other measures included in the plan are reducing the number of outlets authorized to offer tobacco products and reducing the amounts of nicotine in cigarettes sold throughout the country.

 

 

The announcement of the anti-smoking reforms of the government of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had mixed reactions in the different sectors of the southern country.

According to Professor Janet Hook of the University of Otago in southeastern New Zealand, the measures "will help people to quit smoking or switch to less harmful products, as well as make young people less likely to become addicted. to nicotine. "

But others, like Sunny Kaushal, chairman of a local lobby group representing retail stores, argue that the measures will incentivize the creation of a black market for tobacco products.

Speaking to New Zealand news site Stuff, Kaushal said: "There will be a crime wave. Gangs and criminals will occupy the spaces" left by legal tobacco sales.

In fact, some critics of Ardern have used her anti-smoking measures to accuse her and her government of "authoritarianism."

"Steerpike", a columnist for the conservative British weekly The Spectator, says: "Jacinda's blessed drawer response to any public policy crisis has been to restrict or ban the phenomenon in question."

 

LINK: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-59602744