News article
New smoked tobacco and vaping policies announced today will support Aotearoa in its goal to become smokefree by 2025 and help curb youth vaping rates. Following public consultation and input on regulatory proposals earlier this year, Cabinet has approved new policies to be set in regulations. These policies have the objectives of making vaping less appealing to youth, significantly reducing the availability of smoked tobacco and making it less addictive.
Policies approved by Cabinet include:
New vaping policies
- New Specialist Vape Shops (SVRs) will not be able to open up in the immediate vicinity of schools and marae.
- Vape products and their packaging will only be able to have generic flavour descriptions.
- Maximum nicotine strength allowed in single-use (disposable) vapes to be reduced so they are less addictive
- All vaping products will have removable batteries and child-safety mechanisms to improve their safety and better protect our young people.
New smoked tobacco policies
- Finalised criteria that will be used to select approved smoked tobacco retailers for the smoked tobacco retail scheme has responsible people, business location, safety, security and training at the forefront of all considerations. The scheme takes effect from 1 July 2024 and will see the number of tobacco retailers drop to no more than 600.
- Finalised product testing requirements so that from 1 April 2025, we can ensure only very low-level nicotine products are being sold. Full strength cigarettes contain approximately 15-16mg/g of nicotine and low nicotine tobacco will have no more than 0.8mg/g, resulting in a significantly less addictive product.
Existing policies coming into effect
- After the regulations are made, general retailers such as dairies, supermarkets and petrol stations, will be required to advise the Director-General of Health if they are selling notifiable products.
It is expected new regulations will be made in August 2023 and phased in over time with more operational detail available at the same time.
Decisions announced today are evidence-based actions informed by new data from the New Zealand Health Survey looking at smoking status of daily vapers, published on the Ministry of Health website.
There has been a dramatic reduction in smoking rates, with the overall daily rate in New Zealand decreasing from 14.5% to 8% during the past seven years. Since 2015, daily smoking rates for wāhine Māori halved, with the steepest decrease in the past two years.
The availability of vaping is likely to be part of the reason for this reduction, but the data published today also shows an increasing number of people, mainly youth, are vaping now who have never smoked before.
Most daily vapers aged 15 or older were ex-smokers (56%), with 22% vaping as well as smoking. Daily vapers aged 25 or older were nearly all ex-smokers (64%) or current smokers (26%). However, data also shows there is a relatively small, but growing (18% in 2021/22, up from 7% in 2017/18), number of vapers that never smoked.
Later this year, Manatū Hauora will review the policy settings for vaping products to determine if there are any necessary changes that need to be made to better support the intent and objectives of the Act.
The Government continues to monitor and adjust its regulatory settings to get the intended balance right. The Government has acknowledged it shares concerns about increased vaping among young people and that more restrictions are needed to build on existing protections in the legislation and address this issue. The review will consider the availability, appeal and addictiveness of vaping, smokeless tobacco and emerging products.
Any changes to the law would follow usual Parliamentary processes, including consideration by a select committee.