New Zealand is administering a ban on cigarettes to help stop youth smoking. With this law in place the harmful effects of cigarettes would be away from younger people and eventually die out with generations. 

     Legislators have plans to pass legislation that will allow the minimum age to buy cigarettes to keep rising year after year,  according to USA Today. Officials hope that “smoking will fade away decades before then.” This would then have “fewer than 5% of New Zealanders smoking by 2025.”

     Any effort being made to help reduce the numbers of people smoking would be greatly beneficial to the population. If this plan is being put into place for cigarettes, hopefully that sometime in the future a similar plan would be done to ban or make vaping much more restrictive. 

     Not only has smoking, be it cigarettes or vaping, been an ongoing issue in New Zealand and other countries, but people are so addicted they could care less about the many risks to their health. If a lot of other places also started to make a ban on cigarettes and electronic cigarettes and vapes, it could help people in the long run not become addicted in the first place and stop hurting their lungs. 

     New Zealand’s associate health minister Dr Ayesha Verrall said “This is a historic day for the health of our people.” Verrall said “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” according to The Guardian. 

     While it is unclear how this plan will work out in the future, given the fact that it is illegal to sell tobacco and vapes to minors here in the US yet they still manage to acquire them somehow, I think trying to make an effort to end smoking and vaping is the best thing officials can do currently. Smoking isn’t beneficial to anyone and it’s highly addictive as well as poses numerous health risks. If we don’t give these products to people who would never get the opportunity to try them, they would never get addicted because there would be no interest. 

     Like as was mentioned before, not only are cigarettes an issue but so are vapes and electronic cigarettes. Verrall said “We think vaping is a really appropriate quit tool.” But that’s another issue. Vaping now is primarily not being used as a quit tool for cigarettes. It’s being used as another addictive nicotine product unto itself. 

     While New Zealand is taking good steps so far, it would be in their best interest if they would expand that ban onto vapes and some of the other products containing nicotine as well.