The final puff ?
▻https://www.science.org/content/article/final-puff-can-new-zealand-quit-smoking-good
▻https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.adg2115/files/_20221209_nf_nzsmoking3_1600px.jpg
As New Zealand’s associate minister for health, [Ayesha Verrall] has led the development of the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan, which could make New Zealand the first country in the world to achieve smoke-free status—typically defined as an adult smoking rate of no more than 5%.
[...] Unveiled in December 2021, the plan features three radical interventions. One, called the smoke-free generation strategy, will make it illegal to ever sell combustible tobacco products to those born in 2009 or later. The goal is to create an ever-growing cohort that never picks up the smoking habit. A second provision calls for reducing the number of tobacco retailers by as much as 95%, to make cigarettes harder to get. The boldest proposal in the eyes of experts is reducing cigarettes’ nicotine content to below addictive levels. This “cuts right at the heart of why people smoke in the first place,” says Geoffrey Fong, head of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Waterloo. It’s potentially a “true game changer in the battle against smoking.”