Ministry of Health Manatū Hauora

Aotearoa New Zealand has a lot to be proud of – our culture, our places and especially our people.

Our Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan shows that, as a nation, we stand up for change that makes a positive difference.

The plan is a result of many significant milestones and moments in time. From advocates to academics, passionate voices from all corners of our community have played their part in shaping its intent and its content.

Guided by the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, our action plan has bold new measures that will support Aotearoa’s goal of becoming a smokefree country by 2025.

We have six game-changing focus areas:

1. Making sure there is Māori leadership and decision-making across all levels of the action plan. As part of this focus area, we’re standing up a taskforce to make sure the action plan is on track to achieve the smokefree goal for Māori.
2. Funding more health promotion and community activities to motivate and mobilise people across the country to get behind the smokefree goal and to sign-post support for people on their quit journey.
3. Giving people the wrap-around support they need on their quit journey by investing in more tailored help such as a stop smoking service for Pacific communities.
4. Making it easier to quit and harder to become addicted by only having low-level nicotine smoked tobacco products for sale and restricting product design features that increase their appeal and addictiveness.
5. Making smoked tobacco products harder to buy by reducing the number of shops selling them and kickstarting a smokefree generation.
6. Making sure the tobacco industry and retailers follow the law.

How will we know if we’re succeeding? When we start to achieve three outcomes.

The first: eliminating inequities in smoking rates and smoking-related illnesses. People living in the most deprived areas of Aotearoa suffer much more from the negative impacts of smoked tobacco. We need to change this because we need all communities to reach Smokefree 2025.

The second outcome is to ensure our tamariki and rangatahi never start smoking and remain smokefree. We can support them to make the right choices by helping their parents, whānau, and the adults around them to quit smoking.

The third outcome is to increase the number of people who successfully quit smoking. It’s hard to stop smoking and it’s time to change the smoking environment so we can make it easier for people who smoke to quit.

There’s a lot to do over the next four years and beyond. But with purpose, pioneering policy, pace and public participation, we can do this. Together, we can create an Aotearoa where smokefree is not an aspirational goal but our reality.

It's really important because people out there are suffering from lung cancer.

Smokefree means to me: protecting the health of your family and friends, having you around to make lasting memories with the people who love you. Stay smokefree!

What a smokefree New Zealand looks like to me is that everyone is healthy and active and that people's lives will be longer.

What does smokefree mean to us? It means fresh air, it means a smokefree country that our children deserve. It's a goal and we hope to achieve this as soon as we can.