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New Zealand on Tuesday passed extensive legislation aimed at preventing minors from becoming smokers, including a lifetime prohibition on cigarette sales to everyone born after 2008.

Under the new laws, which take effect next year, the country’s smoking age of 18 would be raised year by year until it applied to the whole population. Beginning in 2023, those under 15 would be barred from buying cigarettes for the rest of their lives.

The legislation is the result of more than a decade of public health campaigns. In 2011, New Zealand first announced its plans to reduce smoking levels to below 5 percent of the population by 2025, a target extending across all ethnic groups, including Indigenous Maori and Pacific Island citizens. Over the years, the price of cigarettes has been hiked to among the highest in the world, with a pack of cigarettes costing about $20.

https://tnewsline.com/2022/12/14/world/new-zealand-bans-cigarette-sales-to-everyone-born-after-2008/