Does is true in New Zealand banned cigarettes for 2008

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Does is true that the New Zealand banned sales cigarettes for anyone who after 2008? In the sense that such people will not be able to buy cigarettes even when they reach 18 or another age in which so far it was possible to buy cigarettes in New Zealand so far?

I am Polish, my friend would say that it happened in our country, i.e. Poland, he would use it to create some extreme right-wing party that would convince young voters that they were deprived of their freedom to smoke and if they would help him become a "fuhrer" he would will withdraw the smoking ban for them and will make a proscription list of all members of the parliament who originally voted for the ban and I will send them to a concentration camp that he is sure that young people would be willing to trade all our Polish democracy with all its privileges for a pack of cigarettes and he is sure that young New Zenlanders, British or even Americans, as if forbidding the younger generation to smoke cigarettes and leaving the older generation to play it well with the hatred of the younger generation for the older one could take power in a given country

Lawmakers in New Zealand are considering new laws that will gradually increase the legal smoking age, which is currently 18. If the laws are passed, then starting in 2027 the legal smoking age will increase by 1 each year. So in 2027 the legal age will increase to 19, in 2028 it'll go up to 20, etc. In effect, this means that people born after 2008 will never be allowed to legally smoke in NZ. In addition, the levels of nicotine in cigarettes will be reduced, as will the number of stores that can legally sell tobacco.

Time will tell if these ideas will work, and how they would be enacted and enforced. Decades of previous anti-smoking measures have already seen smoking rates drop in NZ: according to the 2020/21 NZ Health Survey, 10.9% of adults in NZ are reported to be current smokers, and 9.4% are daily smokers. The government wants to reduce that further to 5% by 2025. Not sure if they'll reach that lofty goal in just 3 years, but they've made considerable progress thus far.

While there's been debate about the pros and cons of these new measures, from what I've seen there hasn't been any significant amount of public opposition to them. The libertarian ACT party is the only party in the NZ parliament to express any opposition to the new measures. But they're hardly popular with NZ youth (let alone any potential extreme right-wing party), plus smoking is already declining among young NZers, although vaping rates are on the rise. Interestingly, vaping is unaffected by the proposed laws and is seen by the Ministry of Health as a way to transition smokers to a less harmful (if not entirely harmless) alternative.

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On another note, I recently read that Denmark is also proposing similar legislation. Other countries may wait to see how the measures end up working out in NZ and elsewhere. I suppose we won't really know unless it's actually tried.

Good for New Zealand but I think tax initiative or rather disinitiative would be far more effective than this sort of governmental overreach
For example here in Poland we had COVID pass i dint have cause I not take vaccine because I'm afraid of adversary reaction.
But we already have plenty of fake COVID passes

Friend of mine said that good skilled politican could use this to stirr discontent and won election that way
That far-right coul try to exploit it, if there is any far-right party in New Zealand

It's true.

I get that it's a nasty and harmful habit but I think it should be applied to everyone. It seems that the older generation seem to have some pretty insane rights that need reigning in now. They can start with grandfather rights for car licences next.

The more I look at different countries political “work”, the more I hear about different hidden strategies and detours to get you to think you are doing the right thing while you’re not. Meanwhile, there are many tricks that are simply traps, to mislead people to pick the wrong side or to create debates with the “other way of thinking”. Politicians encourage tension in societies to have more grip as people become vulnerable. I can see how they use cigarette smoking to create a huge debate, while there are bigger issues the “leaders” are trying to hide at the best of their ability.

Evidence, please?Evidence, please?Evidence, please?Evidence, please?Evidence, please?Evidence, please?

The NZ government have already been progressively increasing taxes on tobacco for years now, in addition to longstanding bans on advertising, in-store cigarette displays, colourful packaging, and smoking in public indoor areas, as well as increased funding for programs to help people quit smoking, all of which has seen smoking rates fall.

When tobacco taxes were introduced, it was speculated that they would lead to a burgeoning black market of cheaper cigarettes. That did end up happening to some extent, but not enough to stop the continued decreases in nationwide smoking rates. Now the government wants to decrease it further, so they're trying more measures.


I won't say that such political exploitation has never happened in NZ, because it certainly has even in recent decades. But overall NZ isn't really the best place for far-right ideologies to flourish. People tend to compare us to the Nordic countries socio-politically ... but with slightly warmer weather.

The two most right-leaning NZ political parties are NZ First and ACT, both of whom have fairly politically savvy leaders but are less popular than the two largest and more moderate parties. NZ First are geared towards elderly people (who are unaffected by the proposed laws) and people in rural areas; they've done well in previous elections, although they lost all their seats in the last election and are currently out of parliament. The libertarian ACT party have been doing well in recent years and are currently the 3rd-largest party in parliament jointly with the Greens (both with 10 seats each); ACT have actually expressed concerns about the proposed measures, accusing the government of trying to create a "nanny-state".

However, both are well behind the two largest parties in parliament, Labour (centre-left, currently in government) and National (centre-right). Both of these parties have been actively increasing smoking restrictions while in government, with little public backlash, and are unlikely to stop any time soon.

First time I ever heard something about New Zealand it's about those tobacco law, even if it's good law I think government should not force people, and if so it should be total ban.
https://youtu.be/fjJN08uqt70

By the way, I wonder what is the difference between New Zealand and Australia, because for most Europeans, when someone says something about New Zealand, he has "and this is a small country near Australia" at the back of his head
I know these two countries have a special bond with each other, like Great Britain and Scotland or Russia and Ukraine , okay that was just an ugly joke, but you know what I mean

Being former British colonies in the South Pacific they're both very similar and very close, like a big brother and a little brother. They're both Western countries with predominantly British and Irish heritage in a more remote part of the world, with largely laid-back people who enjoy the outdoors. But there are still some differences.

I'd describe Australia as larger, warmer and wealthier. It has great beaches, huge deserts, lush rainforests and lively cities. It also has occasional bushfires and many unique and deadly animals. On average, I'd also describe Aussies being more outgoing and outspoken, and politically slightly more conservative.

New Zealand is smaller, quieter, less wealthy, and somewhat colder. It has beautiful scenery like forests, rivers and mountains, but also has volcanoes and occasional earthquakes. I'd describe Kiwis themselves as being slightly more reserved than Aussies but still friendly, and politically slightly more progressive.

Basically, they're the US and Canada of the South Pacific ... and with one often getting a lot more attention than the other.

It's an experiment, certainly. But if governments are going to ban things like recreational drugs, then it makes sense to at least consider the same with tobacco. The ban starting with young people will in time become a total ban, while also giving shopkeepers and older people who are already smokers time to adapt. We'll see how it all goes.

On another note, we don't hear much about Poland down here either. On the news recently, they've been reporting on Poland helping millions of Ukrainian refugees, along with Joe Biden's recent visit there. I also remember last year Australia managed to buy 1 million unused Pfizer vaccines from Poland too, which Aussies were happy to use up.

Tobacco is easy to grow.There will be a huge black market if it’s banned completely.Not that anyone should ever start smoking, no doubt it is bad for people.

I read somewhere and you probably also confirmed it earlier that New Zealanders are mentally and politically similar to Scandinavians, in the sense that such a social democratic (with an emphasis on socialist) welfare state

We try to help Ukrainians as much as we can, although Polish-Ukrainian international relations have not always been friendly.
Ukrainians once committed genocide against Poles, Russians and Jews.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banderites

But that was a long time ago, but since we are talking about it

Recently I talked about this sociological experiment that New Zealand is going to conduct, with the selective ban on selling cigarettes to the younger generation.
One friend of mine said that I was lucky in misfortune that we border Russia, Ukraine and Belarus because if our Polish politicians had the same idea as their New Zealand colleagues, Putler and Lukashenka would be more than happy to be able to satisfy the tobacco hunger of our youth with their own , with their smuggled tobacco, our customs officials already have a serious problem with that.
I do not want to think what would happen on our eastern border if Poland decided to take a similar step as New Zealand

Our youth would probably not have any moral resistance if legal tobacco was no longer available before buying illegal from smuggling, even if they knew that tobacco and vodka smugglers finance, admittedly not directly, Putler's army
So far, the popularity of smoking in Poland is declining, but we Poles like perversity and do not like top-down bans/

I would've said the same of New Zealand a couple of years ago. But covid has shown me that most NZers don't mind tough restrictions, as long as they work – that's the key thing. When NZ had zero covid cases, the government was extremely popular. But now that NZ has ditched zero-covid, learning to live with the virus and with fewer covid restrictions, the government's popularity has gone down again. How's that for perversity.

LOL