New Zealand to ban cigarette sales for future generations
(VOVWORLD) - New Zealand plans to ban young people from ever buying cigarettes in their lifetime in one of the world's toughest crackdowns on the tobacco industry, arguing that other efforts to extinguish smoking were taking too long.
 A woman lights a cigarette in this illustration picture taken in Paris, October 8, 2014. (Photo: REUTERS) |
People aged 14 and under in 2027 will never be allowed to purchase cigarettes in the Pacific country of five million, part of proposals unveiled on Thursday that will also curb the number of retailers authorized to sell tobacco and cut nicotine levels in all products.
The package of measures will make New Zealand's retail tobacco industry one of the most restricted in the world, just behind Bhutan where cigarette sales are banned outright.
Smoking kills about 5,000 people a year in New Zealand, making it one of the country's top causes of preventable death.