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A Proposed New Zealand Law Will Ban Cigarette Sale for an Entire Generation
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A Proposed New Zealand Law Will Ban Cigarette Sale for an Entire Generation

While it is not an outright ban, it cuts off access to nicotine products for an entire generation. But could it work?

Health

In a move that will prevent an entire generation from taking up smoking, New Zealand plans to bring in a new law to take the national adult smoking rate under 5 percent by 2025, Reuters reported.

According to the numbers released by the New Zealand government, smoking is one of the top causes of preventable death in the island nation. Smoking kills 5,000 people every year in the country where approximately 11.6 percent of people above the age of 15 smoke, said another Reuters report. However, smoking rates are much higher for the indigenous people with 29 percent of Maori and 18 percent of Pasifika people engaging in the addictive habit, Guardian reported.

New Zealand's existing laws around smoking make it illegal for individuals under the age of 18 to buy cigarettes and is also one of the 17 countries which mandate plain packaging of cigarettes, Reuters reported. While this has dropped adult smoking rates from 18 percent a decade earlier to just under 12 percent, according to The Guardian report, the government's move is to push this number further down to less than five percent in the next five years.