New Zealand has passed a law on phasing out smoking, imposing a lifetime ban on the purchase of cigarettes by young people, the Associated Press reports. The law states that tobacco cannot be sold to persons born on or after January 1, 2009.
This means that the minimum age for buying cigarettes will continue to rise. In theory, someone who tries to buy a pack of cigarettes after 50 years has to show that he is at least 63 years old.
But health officials hope that smoking will disappear long before that. They have a stated goal of making New Zealand a smoke-free country by 2025.
The new law also reduces the number of retailers that can sell tobacco from about 6,000 to 600.
The new law does not apply to vaping, which has already become more popular than smoking in New Zealand.
“There is no good reason to allow the sale of a product that kills half of the people who use it,” Deputy Health Minister Dr. Aisha Verrol told MPs in parliament. According to her, the health care system will save billions of dollars by eliminating diseases caused by smoking. She added that the bill will lead to a generational change and leave the youth with the best health.