New Zealand has announced that it will outlaw smoking for the next generation so that those who are below the age of 14 will never be legally able to buy tobacco.
The associate health minister Dr Ayesha Verrall said on Thursday that in order to create a smoke-free generation of New Zealanders, the legal smoking age will keep increasing every year.
“This is a historic day for the health of our people,” she said.
Verrall further said that they want to make sure young people never start smoking so they will make it an offence to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth.
The smoking rates in New Zealand have been dropping over time. It was 18 per cent a decade earlier which has now dropped down to 11.6 per cent.
The government aims to make smoking unaffordable and inaccessible so as to reach its goal of making the country entirely smoke-free within the next four years.
