Takaka, Town in the South Island, New Zealand

Wellington, Dec 9 New Zealand on Thursday launched an action plan that aims to reduce daily smoking prevalence to less than 5 per cent for all population groups by 2025.The 'Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan' has six key focus areas with ground-breaking policies to radically reduce the "availability, addictiveness and appeal" of smoked tobacco products, Associate Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall said at an event in Parliament.New policies include making it harder to buy these products by reducing the number of shops selling them and decreasing nicotine levels in smoked tobacco products to help people who smoke to quit smoking and help people, especially young people, to never become addicted, Xinhua news agency quoted Verrall as saying.It will also prevent smoked tobacco products from being designed in ways that keep people addicted and kickstart a smokefree generation by making it an offence to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to people born after a certain date, she said."Smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death in New Zealand and causes one in four cancers. Smoking related harm is particularly prevalent in Maori, Pacific and low-income communities," Verrall said.Smoking kills approximately 4,500 to 5,000 people every year in New Zealand, with around 12 to 13 deaths every day due to smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke, she added.The Ministry of Health's Population Health and Prevention Group Manager Jane Chambers said the impacts of smoked tobacco products disproportionately affect Maori and Pacific people."We want to make sure young people never start smoking so we will make it an offence to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth. People aged 14 when the law comes into effect will never be able to legally purchase tobacco," Chambers said.Key outcomes of the action plan include eliminating inequities in smoking rates and smoking-related illnesses; creating a smokefree generation by increasing the number of children and young people who remain smokefree; and increasing the number of people who successfully quit smoking.A bill, which will be put before the Parliament in mid-2022, will set out the timeframes for the legislative policies to be phased in.Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor

TakakaFOLLOW

Takaka, Latest News

Mumbai, Dec 20 New Zealand pacer Tim Southee has revealed that sharing the cricketing field alongside legendary Indian ... ...

Wellington, Dec 14 Food prices in New Zealand fell 0.6 per cent in November compared to the previous ... ...

Game fanatics have a reason to rejoice as for the first time, Sony on Monday announced its range of first-party console covers for the PlayStation 5 and also three new colours for the DualSense controller. ...

New Delhi, Dec 13 Cyber security researchers on Monday warned that hackers are making over 100 attempts every ... ...

Mumbai, Dec 13 Having Rahul Dravid as the head coach is the most "amazing" thing to have happened ... ...

New Delhi, Dec 11 Several popular services, including Apple iCloud, Amazon, Twitter, Cloudflare and Minecraft, are vulnerable to ... ...

Wellington, Dec 10 The New Zealand government is stepping up its work to address long-standing problems in conservation ... ...

Wellington, Dec 9 New Zealand on Thursday launched an action plan that aims to reduce daily smoking prevalence ... ...