New Zealand’s plan to outlaw smoking for the next generation is misguided

IN CHESS, THE endgame begins when most pieces have been taken off the board. With just a handful left, options narrow and moves become more decisive. So it is with smoking. Public-health types use the phrase “tobacco endgame” to mean a happy situation where the proportion of people who smoke has fallen below 5%. For any country to have come close to that, many tactics will probably have been used already: gigantic health warnings, age restrictions, plain packaging, disgusting pictures of cancerous lungs, stiff taxes, public-smoking bans and so on. Yet still, some people keep smoking. The endgame requires creativity and political will.New Zealand has been a pioneer. It has banned cigarette adverts and smoking in most public places. Now it is going further. On December 9th the government laid out measures “to make New Zealand smokefree”. From 2024 it will reduce the number of shops allowed to sell cigarettes. The following year, it will lower the amount of nicotine permissible in cigarettes. And most far-reaching of all, from 2027 it will make it illegal to sell cigarettes to anybody born after 2008. Such people will never be allowed to buy tobacco legally. Only Bhutan, which bans tobacco for everyone, has a stricter policy.