NEW ZEALAND’S BILL ON TOBACCO ENDGAME

• To fulfil its plan to be smokefree by 2025, the New Zealand Parliament recently tabled the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill.
• Emulating New Zealand, Malaysia is also considering a ban on smoking and the sale of all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes, to people born after 2007.
• The Tobacco Endgame refers to a policy approach that focuses on ending the Tobacco Epidemic, aiming at a ‘tobacco-free future’.
• The Bill seeks three Strategies to reduce Smoking significantly or ending it.
• If implemented, it will be the world-first legislation that will stop the next generation from ever being able to legally buy cigarettes.

Strategies Proposed:

• Drastically reducing nicotine content in tobacco so it is no longer addictive (known as “denicotinisation” or “very low nicotine cigarettes” (VLNC)).
• A 90% to 95% reduction in the number of shops that can sell tobacco.
• Making it illegal to sell tobacco to people born on or after 1 January 2009. (thus, creating a “smoke free generation”).

Status of Tobacco Consumption

• The tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced, killing more than 8 million people a year (as per the World Health Organisation), including around 1.2 million deaths from exposure to second-hand smoke.
• Nearly one in four people across the globe use tobacco.
• All forms of tobacco are harmful, and there is no safe level of exposure to tobacco.
• Cigarette smoking is the most common form of tobacco use worldwide.
• Other tobacco products include waterpipe tobacco, various smokeless tobacco products, cigars, cigarillos, roll-your-own tobacco, pipe tobacco, bidis and kreteks.
• Tobacco use is a major risk factor for many chronic diseases, including cancer, lung disease, cardiovascular disease and stroke.
• 38% men and 9% women above 15 years of age use tobacco products, as per the National Family Health Survey 5 (2019-21).
• Women (19%) and men (51%) belonging to Scheduled Tribes are more likely to use tobacco than those from any other caste/tribe groups.
• Among men as well as women, the use of tobacco is higher in rural areas (43% for men and 11 % for women) than in urban areas.
• Nearly three-fifths of men and 15% of women with no schooling or less than 5 years of schooling use tobacco.

Socio-Economic Burden of Tobacco Consumption:

• Tobacco use contributes to poverty by diverting household spending from basic needs such as food and shelter to tobacco.
• The economic costs of tobacco use are substantial and include significant health care costs for treating the diseases caused by tobacco use as well as the lost human capital that results from tobacco-attributable morbidity and mortality.
• It is one of the major causes of death and disease in India and accounts for nearly 1.35 million deaths every year.
• India is also the second largest consumer and producer of tobacco. A variety of tobacco products are available at very low prices in the country.
• The total economic costs attributed to tobacco use (from all diseases in India in the year 2017-18 for persons aged 35 years and above) amounted to INR 177 341 crore.

SOURCE: THE HINDU,THE ECONOMIC TIMES,MINT