November 11, 2025 • 17 mins
Remember when we were meant to be smoke free by 2025?
New Zealand’s goal to have fewer than 5% of people smoking by the end of the year looks unlikely to be met.
The target was introduced in 2010 – and while smoking has dropped significantly since then (from 16.4% in 2011 to 6.9% in 2023-24) there are still hundreds of thousands of people smoking daily.
In December 2022, New Zealand enacted world-leading tobacco control legislation – essentially creating a whole generation who’ll never be able to buy a pack of ciggies.
But, with that plan up in smoke – what next?
Today on The Front Page, Hāpai te Hauora chief operating officer Jason Alexander is with us to discuss how we might be able to reach our goal of being smoke free.
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You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Editor/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Jane Yee
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Kilda.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Remember when
we were meant to be smoke free by twenty twenty five?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
New Zealand's goal.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
To have fewer than five percent of people smoking by
the end of the year looks unlikely to be met.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
The target was introduced in twenty ten, and while.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Smoking has dropped significantly since then, from sixteen point four
percent and twenty eleven, for example, to six point nine
percent in twenty twenty three twenty four, there are still
hundreds of thousands of people in Altaioa smoking every day.
In December twenty twenty two, New Zealand enacted world leading
(00:51):
tobacco control legislation, essentially creating a whole generation who'll never
be able to buy a pack of cigis.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
But with that up in smoke, what's next?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Today?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
On the front Page, hard by teh Or, Chief Operating
Officer Jackson Alexander is with us to discuss how we
might be able to reach our goal of being smoke free. So, Jason,
what do our smoking statistics look like at the moment?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
So it is twenty twenty five, obviously a big year
for us. We've been aiming for five percent smoking rates
across all of our populations, but we're not quite there.
We won't know the official end of year data until
next year. But the last rates we had was sitting
just shy of seven percent for all populations, and unfortunately
(01:44):
our Mary and Pacific rates are much higher than that.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
What are the rates for Mali and PACIFICA.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
So last measure we had fourteen point seven percent for Mardi,
that's the highest, and our Pacific final are not far
behind us, sitting on just over twelve percent twelve point
three percent.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
What do you think the reasoning is behind that?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
There's a whole lot of reasons. We started off higher
to start, so, before we embarked on this journey of
trying to drive towards this twenty twenty five goal, that
Mary and Pacific rates were much higher. They were slower
to move in the beginning, although they have accelerated over
the last few years. But yeah, there's a whole lot
of historical reasons why Mary and Pacific rates have traditionally
(02:28):
been higher than the rest of the population.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Are we continuing to trend downwards or do you think
the statistics have really stagnated in recent years.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
So the MARTI rates actually have been dropping quite a
bit over the last sort of five ten years, I guess,
but the general pop rates have there was little, well
basically no change. I think it might have gone up
a point one of a percent between the last two years.
So it is tricky to know until we get this
year's data, which will which will drop next year.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Recent figures I saw a show about three hundred thousand
daily smokers remain. What do you see is the biggest
challenges of getting those numbers down, especially by the end
of the year.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Look, it's yeah, by the end of the year is
really tricky. So that's a lot of people that have
to quit. Just for Mary alone, I think it's about
sixty two thousand that we need to see quit smoking
over the course of this year. Just to put that in perspective,
we're getting about ten to eleven thousand quit each year
(03:32):
based on recent trends, so it's huge. It's based off
that it's pretty obvious that we're not going to get there,
definitely not for all populations. We are still hopeful that
we'll get there for the general population, but definitely not
for Mariya and Pacific only something drastic changes over the
next couple of months, or something's happened that we're not
aware of over the past year, And.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
What are some of the biggest challenges there for those
last remaining three hundred thousand.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
I suppose yeah. I mean, it's an addictive product, so
I don't think we should skirt around that. Neicatines are
highly addictive. It's tricky to get off. A lot of
people have tried, a lot of people sort of try
and come back, to come back and try again. But
it really does get us hooks into you, I guess,
and it really is a tricky one to quite I
(04:19):
feel it was easy. Then the numbers wouldn't be this high,
tobacco industry wouldn't be this large, and we wouldn't have
five thousand New Zealanders dying from tobacco related illness every year.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Do you reckon?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I know that because excise tax has gone up over
the years, right, and it's now really really expensive to
buy a pack of smokes at the dairy. I used
to actually be a smoke in my early twenties, and
I remember when the packets went up from I think
it was like twenty bucks to twenty five bucks. And
that's you know, in my early twenties wasn't earning a
(04:52):
whole much bunch of money. So that's when I kind
of tape it off and thought, right, I need to
change what I'm doing because I just don't have the money.
So those people who still smoking today are spending about
fifty bucks a packet, say, that's obviously not stopping them.
The price isn't stopping them. Hey, so do you reckon
we've kind of reached the ceiling I suppose in excise taxes.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, cigarets are very expensive. What we do have to do, though,
is make sure that we are increasing them in line
with everything else. Otherwise, relatively they become cheaper. So we
don't want them to become cheaper in relation to other
products because that could sort of drive demand the other way.
But certainly, I know in the early days we did
get some good gains through the rising of the prices
of cigarettes to drive a lot of people to try
(05:36):
and quit. But once again, it's such an addictive product
that it's not that easy. So, yes, that is costing
smokers a lot of money. They obviously would much rather
have the money in their back pocket. But because it's
such an addictive product, it's not that simple.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And there's also the situation of illicit tobacco coming through
that we've got to worry about now as well.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Ay, and it's hard to get engaged on exactly how
big that is. We've got one of the best customs
in the world here in New Zealand. Our borders are
pretty tight. So yeah, whenever you increase the price of
something and something, especially when it's addictive like this, then
you are going to see people try to bring it
(06:21):
through other means, to try and dose those excise taxes
and try and get them to people who require them
because they're are so addicted through other means.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Well.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
So we can probably agree that the smoke free twenty
twenty five goal is not going to be hit right.
It's twenty twenty five now, obviously, But when they envisioned
it in twenty ten, do you think it was overly
ambitious then, or if we made the right steps, could
we have actually achieved it by the end of this year.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
It was ambitious, without a doubt, but it was ambitious
because it needed to be. It is the biggest killer
here in New Zealand. It's not something that you can
sort of lightfoot around and just hope it gets better.
You have to sort of go after it aggressively. And
it was so embedded within within our society, I guess
that we needed these big steps to try and get
rid of it and start reducing some of the harm
(07:13):
that our communities have experienced over the years from it. So, yes,
it was it was super optimistic, but there were some
steps in there that could have got us there.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
And what are some of those steps?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I mean, yeah, probably the probably the big three are
the ones that were in the Curcal legislation that were proposed.
They were a little bit late to the table, but
they were three sort of I guess, just logical things
that would have made a huge difference. So, first of all,
making cigarettes less addictive. That obviously is going to make
(07:50):
if people try cigarettes and they're less likely to get
addicted to them, and if they want to try and
get rid of them, then it's going to make it
a bit easier for them to move on from cigarettes.
Can reducing the number of outlets. You can get cigarettes
everywhere here, Every single area has got them. Some streets
have got three dairies and all of them will have
cigarettes like that's totally unnecessary. If we look at the
(08:13):
saturation of tobacco outlets, particular and ow in some of
our poorer, our underserved communities, then there's even more there
than there are now more affluent suburbs, and the smoking
rates in those suburbs, which are mostly Malori and Pacific
suburbs by the way, are reflective of those So reducing
those numbers right down just to make them less available
(08:35):
and less prevalent in our communities would have made a
huge difference. And the third would have was the smoke
free generation measure, which would have stopped anyone born I
think it was jan one, two thousand and nine. They
never would have been able to buy cigarettes so progressively
increasing their age, and that would have made a huge difference.
It would have obviously cut off the flow of new
smokers coming in, so then we can just focus on
(08:57):
looking after those that currently smoked. And I would have
made particularly a huge difference for Mardi communities, which we
know Mali population is a lot younger than the general population,
so it would have it would have been a game change.
Of those three well, it.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Made international headlines when it was first announced. We were
seen as being world leading, but then it was scrapped
obviously last year.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Do you reckon that was a huge mistake?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Look, I think it was. There was some some people
flagged the difficulties around sort of putting some of these
things through, and I just think it would have been
with it once again, like it was, they were aspirational,
there were world leading policies. There wasn't evidence a lot
of evidence for them because we were literally the first
in the world, so we were trying something different, but
(09:45):
we were doing it for a good reason, because we
were trying to get rid of this incitious product from
from Altiora. So yeah, I honestly do think it was
a big mistake to get rid of those and I
think we should still look at those or some very
on those three areas that we need to do if
we're going to shift this.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
The idea that more young New Zealanders should take up
smoking in order to pay for tax cuts is morally reprehensible.
I don't think New Zealanders thought that's what they were
going to get. I don't think that's the change they
were voting for when they voted at the last election.
Mister Speaker, National's decision to wind back the smoke free
(10:35):
alter or agenda as a disgrace to New Zealand as
a country. It is an international embarrassment and it is
making headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
How do you feel about vaping?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, vaping is a tricky one. Obviously, Dylan Ever wanted
it to have sort of the grip on some of
our kids that it does now. It was never intended
to be for children. It was never intended to be
for non smokers to use. It was always intended to
be an option to help people shift from tobacco, and
(11:17):
in the beginning, well even even still now, it has
worked for a lot of our long term smokers that
have tried other methods and it and just haven't been
able to break away. So I think it does have
a place, But we didn't roll it out how we
should have. We weren't careful, we didn't look after. I
don't say that it was too accessible. Even now you
(11:38):
can see how many of these vape stores are around.
It's ridiculous and once again saturated in those same neighborhoods
that I was speaking about earlier with the tobacco outlets.
It just seems to be everywhere. And if you speak
to any sort of intermediate high school principal, if you
ask them what the top issue affecting them is, it's faithing.
(12:00):
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, I guess it's seen as I suppose, trendy to
young people. Obviously they've never tried a cigarette in their lives,
but then they pick up a vape. Do you ever
wonder because when I was thinking about this and when
I was younger, smoking was quote unquote cool, right, And
that's probably why I started when I was so young.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
In terms of trends are cyclical.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Do you ever think that smoking there's a chance of
smoking to become cool again once all the vaping has
worn off?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
And is that a real worry?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah? I think it's always a worry. We don't know
how trends are going to go. I mean, but even
when it comes to tobacco, like making it a truly
it didn't just happen. It was very purposeful, was very
intentional by the tobacco industry. They were putting cigarettes into
music videos, onto MTV like all these different places, and
(12:52):
like it wasn't it doesn't. It didn't just happen. So
that's why we need to make sure that we're very
purposeful with any measures that you put in place, because
stuff doesn't just happen, but we do have to make
sure that those protections are there.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
In terms of vaping, I know that the advertising is
watered down quite a bit now, but is there anything
further that we can do to try and stop youth
from picking up a vape or maybe banning specific flavors altogether,
or something like that, making them all black and boring
and you know, tobacco flavored or something.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, I think there's a lot of measures that we
could still employ, and a lot of them are similar
to the approach that we took with tobacco. So we
can make the packets least appealing, we can make the flavors, well,
that's not a tobacco on, but we can make the
flavors less appealing to children, even the name all those
sorts of things. Once again, the amount of outlets there are,
(13:49):
it's crazy, silly little things, like it's almost like that's
circum meanting the rules, but they're not. It's sort of
like the store within a store at a dairy where
they sort of have two doors, but it's the same
store or the same person and there's like a piece
of timber up there that separates the two, and then
they're allowed to be a vape store. Like that just
doesn't make any sense to me, and I don't think
it's in the spirit of the law. So we need
(14:12):
to sort of tidy up all those little things. The
placement of ape stores. We've got them still close to schools,
Like we brought in some rules around the placement of them,
but it didn't apply to any of the ones which
are already close to schools, And there was even a
delay from the announcement until then it was rolled out,
and a whole lot more of vape stores popped up
(14:33):
within those zones that we know we don't want vape
stores in the meantime, So there's lots of lots of
things we could and we should be doing to make
sure that we don't end up with another problem. Well,
I think the problems already here, to be honest, but
we need to trying to actively work against those things.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
So, Jason, where do we go to from now?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Do we kind of need to smoke free twenty thirty
five or something.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
That's a very good question, I guess. For so long
we've always been focused on the Smoke Free twenty twenty
five gold, but it's not it's not a thing that
we miss and then we stop. I think we sort
of we really do need to double down on our
efforts now because people are still dying from this product.
We need to get it out of out of New Zealand.
It's sort of sort of serves no purpose. It's almost
(15:18):
like a wasp if you're like, it's sort of it's
there's no redeeming qualities to it. I think the only
thing you ever hear is someone saying that it helps
me relax, but that's usually from smokers, and it's because
they're addicted. So it's sort of curbing that that nagging
sound in the back of the head that telling them
that they need nicotine.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Were you ever a smoker?
Speaker 1 (15:42):
No, I couldn't afford it when I was a kid,
to be honest, probably wasn't cool enough either. Tried it
a couple of times, tasted like rubbish, so I never
sort of pursued it.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
It does, man, it's awful, and after I think because
I stopped smoking because I picked up the vapes, so
I am actually a converted smoker. And you know, and
then you tape it down from over time. But I
remember thinking, once you're over that that push, you go out.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
And you're like, oh my god, did I smell like
that all the time.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
I remember like dowsing myself with perfume after going for
a smoko and you think.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Wow, like you are.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Really it's an addiction, and when once you're in that
bubble and you can only see it when you're out
of it exactly.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Oh, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
No problem, Thank you for your time today.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at NZHERLD, dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is
produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who's also our editor.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
get your podcasts and chew you in it tomorrow for
another look behind the headlines.
Kilda.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Remember when
we were meant to be smoke free by twenty twenty five?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
New Zealand's goal.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
To have fewer than five percent of people smoking by
the end of the year looks unlikely to be met.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
The target was introduced in twenty ten, and while.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Smoking has dropped significantly since then, from sixteen point four
percent and twenty eleven, for example, to six point nine
percent in twenty twenty three twenty four, there are still
hundreds of thousands of people in Altaioa smoking every day.
In December twenty twenty two, New Zealand enacted world leading
(00:51):
tobacco control legislation, essentially creating a whole generation who'll never
be able to buy a pack of cigis.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
But with that up in smoke, what's next?
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Today?
Speaker 2 (01:03):
On the front Page, hard by teh Or, Chief Operating
Officer Jackson Alexander is with us to discuss how we
might be able to reach our goal of being smoke free. So, Jason,
what do our smoking statistics look like at the moment?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
So it is twenty twenty five, obviously a big year
for us. We've been aiming for five percent smoking rates
across all of our populations, but we're not quite there.
We won't know the official end of year data until
next year. But the last rates we had was sitting
just shy of seven percent for all populations, and unfortunately
(01:44):
our Mary and Pacific rates are much higher than that.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
What are the rates for Mali and PACIFICA.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
So last measure we had fourteen point seven percent for Mardi,
that's the highest, and our Pacific final are not far
behind us, sitting on just over twelve percent twelve point
three percent.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
What do you think the reasoning is behind that?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
There's a whole lot of reasons. We started off higher
to start, so, before we embarked on this journey of
trying to drive towards this twenty twenty five goal, that
Mary and Pacific rates were much higher. They were slower
to move in the beginning, although they have accelerated over
the last few years. But yeah, there's a whole lot
of historical reasons why Mary and Pacific rates have traditionally
(02:28):
been higher than the rest of the population.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Are we continuing to trend downwards or do you think
the statistics have really stagnated in recent years.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
So the MARTI rates actually have been dropping quite a
bit over the last sort of five ten years, I guess,
but the general pop rates have there was little, well
basically no change. I think it might have gone up
a point one of a percent between the last two years.
So it is tricky to know until we get this
year's data, which will which will drop next year.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Recent figures I saw a show about three hundred thousand
daily smokers remain. What do you see is the biggest
challenges of getting those numbers down, especially by the end
of the year.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Look, it's yeah, by the end of the year is
really tricky. So that's a lot of people that have
to quit. Just for Mary alone, I think it's about
sixty two thousand that we need to see quit smoking
over the course of this year. Just to put that in perspective,
we're getting about ten to eleven thousand quit each year
(03:32):
based on recent trends, so it's huge. It's based off
that it's pretty obvious that we're not going to get there,
definitely not for all populations. We are still hopeful that
we'll get there for the general population, but definitely not
for Mariya and Pacific only something drastic changes over the
next couple of months, or something's happened that we're not
aware of over the past year, And.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
What are some of the biggest challenges there for those
last remaining three hundred thousand.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
I suppose yeah. I mean, it's an addictive product, so
I don't think we should skirt around that. Neicatines are
highly addictive. It's tricky to get off. A lot of
people have tried, a lot of people sort of try
and come back, to come back and try again. But
it really does get us hooks into you, I guess,
and it really is a tricky one to quite I
(04:19):
feel it was easy. Then the numbers wouldn't be this high,
tobacco industry wouldn't be this large, and we wouldn't have
five thousand New Zealanders dying from tobacco related illness every year.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Do you reckon?
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I know that because excise tax has gone up over
the years, right, and it's now really really expensive to
buy a pack of smokes at the dairy. I used
to actually be a smoke in my early twenties, and
I remember when the packets went up from I think
it was like twenty bucks to twenty five bucks. And
that's you know, in my early twenties wasn't earning a
(04:52):
whole much bunch of money. So that's when I kind
of tape it off and thought, right, I need to
change what I'm doing because I just don't have the money.
So those people who still smoking today are spending about
fifty bucks a packet, say, that's obviously not stopping them.
The price isn't stopping them. Hey, so do you reckon
we've kind of reached the ceiling I suppose in excise taxes.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, cigarets are very expensive. What we do have to do, though,
is make sure that we are increasing them in line
with everything else. Otherwise, relatively they become cheaper. So we
don't want them to become cheaper in relation to other
products because that could sort of drive demand the other way.
But certainly, I know in the early days we did
get some good gains through the rising of the prices
of cigarettes to drive a lot of people to try
(05:36):
and quit. But once again, it's such an addictive product
that it's not that easy. So, yes, that is costing
smokers a lot of money. They obviously would much rather
have the money in their back pocket. But because it's
such an addictive product, it's not that simple.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
And there's also the situation of illicit tobacco coming through
that we've got to worry about now as well.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Ay, and it's hard to get engaged on exactly how
big that is. We've got one of the best customs
in the world here in New Zealand. Our borders are
pretty tight. So yeah, whenever you increase the price of
something and something, especially when it's addictive like this, then
you are going to see people try to bring it
(06:21):
through other means, to try and dose those excise taxes
and try and get them to people who require them
because they're are so addicted through other means.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Well.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
So we can probably agree that the smoke free twenty
twenty five goal is not going to be hit right.
It's twenty twenty five now, obviously, But when they envisioned
it in twenty ten, do you think it was overly
ambitious then, or if we made the right steps, could
we have actually achieved it by the end of this year.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
It was ambitious, without a doubt, but it was ambitious
because it needed to be. It is the biggest killer
here in New Zealand. It's not something that you can
sort of lightfoot around and just hope it gets better.
You have to sort of go after it aggressively. And
it was so embedded within within our society, I guess
that we needed these big steps to try and get
rid of it and start reducing some of the harm
(07:13):
that our communities have experienced over the years from it. So, yes,
it was it was super optimistic, but there were some
steps in there that could have got us there.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
And what are some of those steps?
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I mean, yeah, probably the probably the big three are
the ones that were in the Curcal legislation that were proposed.
They were a little bit late to the table, but
they were three sort of I guess, just logical things
that would have made a huge difference. So, first of all,
making cigarettes less addictive. That obviously is going to make
(07:50):
if people try cigarettes and they're less likely to get
addicted to them, and if they want to try and
get rid of them, then it's going to make it
a bit easier for them to move on from cigarettes.
Can reducing the number of outlets. You can get cigarettes
everywhere here, Every single area has got them. Some streets
have got three dairies and all of them will have
cigarettes like that's totally unnecessary. If we look at the
(08:13):
saturation of tobacco outlets, particular and ow in some of
our poorer, our underserved communities, then there's even more there
than there are now more affluent suburbs, and the smoking
rates in those suburbs, which are mostly Malori and Pacific
suburbs by the way, are reflective of those So reducing
those numbers right down just to make them less available
(08:35):
and less prevalent in our communities would have made a
huge difference. And the third would have was the smoke
free generation measure, which would have stopped anyone born I
think it was jan one, two thousand and nine. They
never would have been able to buy cigarettes so progressively
increasing their age, and that would have made a huge difference.
It would have obviously cut off the flow of new
smokers coming in, so then we can just focus on
(08:57):
looking after those that currently smoked. And I would have
made particularly a huge difference for Mardi communities, which we
know Mali population is a lot younger than the general population,
so it would have it would have been a game change.
Of those three well, it.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Made international headlines when it was first announced. We were
seen as being world leading, but then it was scrapped
obviously last year.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Do you reckon that was a huge mistake?
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Look, I think it was. There was some some people
flagged the difficulties around sort of putting some of these
things through, and I just think it would have been
with it once again, like it was, they were aspirational,
there were world leading policies. There wasn't evidence a lot
of evidence for them because we were literally the first
in the world, so we were trying something different, but
(09:45):
we were doing it for a good reason, because we
were trying to get rid of this incitious product from
from Altiora. So yeah, I honestly do think it was
a big mistake to get rid of those and I
think we should still look at those or some very
on those three areas that we need to do if
we're going to shift this.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
The idea that more young New Zealanders should take up
smoking in order to pay for tax cuts is morally reprehensible.
I don't think New Zealanders thought that's what they were
going to get. I don't think that's the change they
were voting for when they voted at the last election.
Mister Speaker, National's decision to wind back the smoke free
(10:35):
alter or agenda as a disgrace to New Zealand as
a country. It is an international embarrassment and it is
making headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
How do you feel about vaping?
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, vaping is a tricky one. Obviously, Dylan Ever wanted
it to have sort of the grip on some of
our kids that it does now. It was never intended
to be for children. It was never intended to be
for non smokers to use. It was always intended to
be an option to help people shift from tobacco, and
(11:17):
in the beginning, well even even still now, it has
worked for a lot of our long term smokers that
have tried other methods and it and just haven't been
able to break away. So I think it does have
a place, But we didn't roll it out how we
should have. We weren't careful, we didn't look after. I
don't say that it was too accessible. Even now you
(11:38):
can see how many of these vape stores are around.
It's ridiculous and once again saturated in those same neighborhoods
that I was speaking about earlier with the tobacco outlets.
It just seems to be everywhere. And if you speak
to any sort of intermediate high school principal, if you
ask them what the top issue affecting them is, it's faithing.
(12:00):
That's crazy.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Yeah, I guess it's seen as I suppose, trendy to
young people. Obviously they've never tried a cigarette in their lives,
but then they pick up a vape. Do you ever
wonder because when I was thinking about this and when
I was younger, smoking was quote unquote cool, right, And
that's probably why I started when I was so young.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
In terms of trends are cyclical.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Do you ever think that smoking there's a chance of
smoking to become cool again once all the vaping has
worn off?
Speaker 3 (12:31):
And is that a real worry?
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah? I think it's always a worry. We don't know
how trends are going to go. I mean, but even
when it comes to tobacco, like making it a truly
it didn't just happen. It was very purposeful, was very
intentional by the tobacco industry. They were putting cigarettes into
music videos, onto MTV like all these different places, and
(12:52):
like it wasn't it doesn't. It didn't just happen. So
that's why we need to make sure that we're very
purposeful with any measures that you put in place, because
stuff doesn't just happen, but we do have to make
sure that those protections are there.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
In terms of vaping, I know that the advertising is
watered down quite a bit now, but is there anything
further that we can do to try and stop youth
from picking up a vape or maybe banning specific flavors altogether,
or something like that, making them all black and boring
and you know, tobacco flavored or something.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Yeah, I think there's a lot of measures that we
could still employ, and a lot of them are similar
to the approach that we took with tobacco. So we
can make the packets least appealing, we can make the flavors, well,
that's not a tobacco on, but we can make the
flavors less appealing to children, even the name all those
sorts of things. Once again, the amount of outlets there are,
(13:49):
it's crazy, silly little things, like it's almost like that's
circum meanting the rules, but they're not. It's sort of
like the store within a store at a dairy where
they sort of have two doors, but it's the same
store or the same person and there's like a piece
of timber up there that separates the two, and then
they're allowed to be a vape store. Like that just
doesn't make any sense to me, and I don't think
it's in the spirit of the law. So we need
(14:12):
to sort of tidy up all those little things. The
placement of ape stores. We've got them still close to schools,
Like we brought in some rules around the placement of them,
but it didn't apply to any of the ones which
are already close to schools, And there was even a
delay from the announcement until then it was rolled out,
and a whole lot more of vape stores popped up
(14:33):
within those zones that we know we don't want vape
stores in the meantime, So there's lots of lots of
things we could and we should be doing to make
sure that we don't end up with another problem. Well,
I think the problems already here, to be honest, but
we need to trying to actively work against those things.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
So, Jason, where do we go to from now?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Do we kind of need to smoke free twenty thirty
five or something.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
That's a very good question, I guess. For so long
we've always been focused on the Smoke Free twenty twenty
five gold, but it's not it's not a thing that
we miss and then we stop. I think we sort
of we really do need to double down on our
efforts now because people are still dying from this product.
We need to get it out of out of New Zealand.
It's sort of sort of serves no purpose. It's almost
(15:18):
like a wasp if you're like, it's sort of it's
there's no redeeming qualities to it. I think the only
thing you ever hear is someone saying that it helps
me relax, but that's usually from smokers, and it's because
they're addicted. So it's sort of curbing that that nagging
sound in the back of the head that telling them
that they need nicotine.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Were you ever a smoker?
Speaker 1 (15:42):
No, I couldn't afford it when I was a kid,
to be honest, probably wasn't cool enough either. Tried it
a couple of times, tasted like rubbish, so I never
sort of pursued it.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
It does, man, it's awful, and after I think because
I stopped smoking because I picked up the vapes, so
I am actually a converted smoker. And you know, and
then you tape it down from over time. But I
remember thinking, once you're over that that push, you go out.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
And you're like, oh my god, did I smell like
that all the time.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
I remember like dowsing myself with perfume after going for
a smoko and you think.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Wow, like you are.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Really it's an addiction, and when once you're in that
bubble and you can only see it when you're out
of it exactly.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Oh, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
No problem, Thank you for your time today.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at NZHERLD, dot co dot MZ. The Front Page is
produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who's also our editor.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
get your podcasts and chew you in it tomorrow for
another look behind the headlines.
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