Duncan Garner: How many kiwis still need to quit to meet NZ’s smokefree 2025 goal?

New Zealand has made tremendous progress towards this goal, announced in 2010 as part of the Māori Affairs select committee inquiry into the tobacco industry and the effects of tobacco use on Māori.

Daily smoking rates have dropped almost 60% from 16.4% in 2011/12 to 6.9% in 2023/24. It means there are now 273,000 fewer smokers in New Zealand.

The improvement for Māori women in particular has been dramatic, falling from 40.6% in 2011/12 to 14.8% in 2023/2. It’s a stunning drop, but 14.8% who still smoke remains high. Māori women are by far the biggest group of New Zealanders still smoking.

Younger people have turned their backs on smoking: just 1% of 15-to 17-year-olds smoke, but the flip side is more than 15% now vape daily and 38% have tried vaping at least once. Based on overseas evidence it is likely most of these teens will soon be experiencing nicotine addiction, if not already.

So while they’ve quit smoking, sadly many of our young people haven’t been able to walk past the more than 1500 vape stores nationwide without going inside. And age restrictions – it’s been illegal to sell vapes to anyone under 18 since 2020 – haven’t stopped them.

But back to smoking. The goal is 5% across all population groups and we have that in our sights. But there’s still work to do.

According to Te Whatu Ora’s most recent report on the Smokefree NZ goal, released a few weeks ago, we need a further 82,000 Kiwis to quit smoking in the next 11 months if we are to hit 5%. That’s 244 a day until the end of the year.

Experts say it’s going to be close. Some health agencies say there’s no way we’ll get there. But about 80,000 people have quit in each of the past three years so perhaps there’s hope.

The problem is these last remaining smokers are digging their heels in.