[NZ] New Zealand's Indigenous people are furious over plans to snuff out anti-smoking laws

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https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/12/06/1217306190/new-zealand-maori-indigenous-people-anti-smoking-law

New Zealand's Indigenous people are furious over plans to snuff out anti-smoking laws

DECEMBER 6, 2023 2:08 PM ET
By Simar Bajaj

The country with arguably the toughest anti-smoking laws in the world is calling for an abrupt about-face.

In December 2022, New Zealand passed pioneering legislation to cut down on smoking: limiting the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels, slashing the number of retailers that sell cigarettes by 90% and banning anyone born after 2008 from ever buying cigarettes in the country.

For the indigenous Māori and Pasifika populations of about 1.3 million, which have smoking rates of 18% to 20%, three times higher than the European population, the smokefree bill was "a cause for celebration," says Teresa Butler, who is Māori and a member of the Ngāti Porou and Te Arawa tribes — and a former smoker of 28 years. "We were ecstatic, so, so happy."

Prior to colonization, New Zealand's indigenous population had never smoked, according to the government's Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Now, 4,000 Māori and 2,000 Pasifika die every year in New Zealand, and according to research in the New Zealand Medical Journal, cigarettes are responsible for 15% to 25% of these deaths. With cigarettes festering in the country since the 1700s, the legislation promised to help stamp out this scourge.

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