New Zealand has achieved a fivefold reduction in its daily smoking rate over a short period. Robert Beaglehole and Ruth Bonita, two former World Health Organization (WHO) directors, argue that the rapid rise in vaping is the primary driver behind this public health success.
The country’s tobacco control efforts began in earnest with the Smoke-free Environments Act of 1990, followed by national cessation hotlines, subsidized nicotine replacement therapies, and the ratification of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2004. Despite aggressive tax increases and plain packaging introduced after adopting the “Smokefree 2025” target in 2011, progress remained slow. By 2016, 15% of the general population and 36% of Māori still smoked daily.
The turning point occurred between 2018 and 2019. A court ruling clarified that New Zealand’s ban on oral tobacco did not apply to vaping products, prompting the Ministry of Health to officially recognize e-cigarettes as a less harmful alternative to smoking.
Following this policy shift, the decline in the number of smokers accelerated from 3.5% annually to 17.9% per year. Among the Māori population, the annual rate of decline jumped to 13.3%. Concurrently, the vaping rate grew from under 1% in 2015 to an estimated 12% by 2025.
While these trends do not prove direct causality, Beaglehole and Bonita highlight the tight temporal alignment between the rise of vaping and the drop in smoking. They argue that while traditional policies like high taxes are useful, they are not enough on their own. Regulated access to non-combustible nicotine products is necessary to protect those most affected by tobacco-related harm.
