New Zealand hatches fresh plan after admitting it won’t hit smoke-free target

New Zealand’s government has released a new plan setting out a series of policies to reach its “bold” ambition of lowering the smoking rate to 5% in the near future, including making traditional tobacco “less available” than vaping products.

The new Smokefree Aotearoa Action Plan admits that the tobacco control programme currently in place has not worked equally for all citizens and that the current 2025 target will not be meet. “We will not achieve our goal of Smokefree 2025…until our current regulatory settings reflect a more risk-proportionate framework,” it states.