THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: New Zealand has unveiled an ambitious plan to make the country smoke-free by 2025.
A parliamentary report into the tobacco industry recommended severely limiting the import and use of tobacco in an attempt to drastically cut smoking rates across the nation.
If the policy is adopted, it will make New Zealand the first country to wipe out smoking in all public places within the next 15 years.
The only other country with a similar policy is Finland, which plans to be smoke-free by 2040.
The proposal, which was devised after months of hearings, has been welcomed by doctors and given cautious support from the government, which said that smoking was a health hazard but that it would be difficult to completely eradicate it.
About 20 per cent of New Zealand’s 4.4 million general population smoke, but that rate is doubled among the indigenous Maori people. >>> Bonnie Malkin in Sydney | Wednesday, November 03, 2010
RADIO NETHERLANDS WORLDWIDE: Smoking ban in small Dutch pubs lifted: A smoking ban in small Dutch pubs has been lifted. An estimated 400 pubs smaller than 70 square metres where only the owner works will no longer have to ban smoking says Health Minister Edith Schippers. >>> | Wednesday, November 03, 2010
The fight will not be over until the ban is lifted for all pubs >>>
