A smokefree advocate group says more work is needed to help the almost 400,000 Kiwis who are still smoking.
It comes after the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill, which was introduced to Parliament by Associate Health Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall, passed its first reading on Tuesday. The Bill is part of the Government’s wider plan for a Smokefree 2025
Data from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) showed 380,000 New Zealanders still smoke cigarettes. There are 5000 cigarette deaths a year which equals out to 14 per day, while 99 percent of smokers are over the age of 18 and 90 percent are older than 25 years old.
The data also showed teenage smoking numbers had reduced dramatically this century falling from 15 percent in 1999 to 1.3 percent in 2021.
Despite the dropping rates for teenagers, ASH acting director Ben Youdan told AM on Wednesday more needs to be done.
"Where the public health problem is at the moment is that 380,000 people are still smoking daily," he told AM co-host Melissa Chan-Green.
"We really need to put a lot more emphasis on the things that are going to trigger those people to make quit attempts to support them to be successful, and encourage them to access much safer alternatives."
Youdan said even though he believes the smokefree bill is a good thing, the impact of it will be pretty small.
"A smokefree generation is a good idea in terms of sustaining that, but actually, the impact of that's going to be pretty small because it's only affecting a small number of people," he told AM.
"Actually it's going to take another decade almost before we get to an age of 21, under which people can't buy cigarettes, which is 10 years behind where the US is, for example."
Youdan said New Zealand is on track to reach the smokefree NZ goal of under five percent by 2025 in some areas, but there are some alarming statistics in certain communities.
"We're there for certain parts of the population, so certainly the most privileged New Zealanders are under five percent now, as are actually young people, so those under the age of 18," he told AM.
"What we've seen over the last decade, in particular, is that smoking has become particularly entrenched in the most deprived communities in New Zealand and also within Māori and Pasifika communities. We still have a lot of work to do, particularly with those smokers."
Data from the Ministry of Health showed Māori adults are almost three times as likely as non-Māori to smoke.
The smoking rates for Māori and Pasifika are at 22.3 percent and 16.4 percent while eight percent of Europeans/other and 3.9 percent of Asians smoke.
A lot of smokers have turned to vaping in recent years as cigarettes become less affordable as tax continues to increase on them.
Youdan said even though there has been a rise in vaping, it's still "much less harmful" than smoking.
"What we need to remember is it's not the nicotine that's killing people, it's the smoke, so if we can get smokers to access their nicotine in a much safer way, that has a massive public health impact," he said.
"We're certainly seeing evidence from overseas of reductions in heart disease, reductions in respiratory illnesses as a consequence of smokers switching towards vaping. We can never say it's completely safe, but we can say that compared to smoking, it's much less harmful and it's about getting that balance absolutely right.
"Vaping is something for smokers. It's something that we should be encouraging people to switch to if they're really struggling and they can't switch to stop smoking. But we don't want never smokers and we don't want young people to [taking it up]."
Watch the full interview with Ben Youdan above.
