The legislation, introduced under the previous Jacinda Ardern-led government, would have banned cigarette sales next year to anyone born after 2008.
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in New Zealand, and the policy had aimed to stop young generations from picking up the habit.
Some common sense on smoking from a government at last! This generational smoking ban was both draconian and undemocratic. It was a hare-brained idea from the very start.
I write as an ex-smoker. I gave up smoking successfully in April 2022. But even so, I am implacably opposed to banning cigarette smoking for future generations. This ban is a socialist-style policy. Boy! Don’t socialists like to interfere in people's private lives! Socialists and people like Rishi Sunak! We in the UK need a policy reversal on this stupid ban as well.
There are far worse things for young people to do than enjoy a smoke. Taking drugs, for example. Only last week, I posted a DW documentary on the problems that Germany is facing with cocaine use. (Click here to watch the hair-raising documentary.) Truly, if the worst a person does in this life twixt cradle and grave is enjoy a cigarette and a drink of alcohol, then I would say that he/she is doing pretty well. I really am sick and tired of this obsession with smoking and smokers and I am also sick and tired of the Nanny State poking its nose in people's private lives. Have people forgotten that it is healthy to have some pleasure from life? Who the hell wants to live forever anyway, and end up in an old people's home, ga-ga, and being fed by some nurse? There is such a thing as enjoying the journey of life. More power to the new New Zealand government which has had the courage to swim against the tide and overturn Jacinda Adern's stupid law. – © Mark Alexander
The left-wing press is having convulsions over this ban reversal:
New Zealand scraps world-first smoking ‘generation ban’ to fund tax cuts: Health experts say axing plan to block sales of tobacco products to next generation will cost thousands of lives »
New Zealand smoking ban: Health experts criticise new government's shock reversal: New Zealand's new government says it plans to scrap the nation's world-leading smoking ban to fund tax cuts. »
