Ministry of Health

Evaluation of the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan

This opportunity... Guided by the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan (the Action Plan) has bold new measures that will support Aotearoa’s goal of becoming a smokefree country by 2025.
The Action Plan aims to encourage more people to quit smoking and to encourage young people to never start, by strengthening stop smoking and health promotion programmes. It will mobilise communities to draw on local knowledge and leadership to achieve a Smokefree Aotearoa. The Plan is focused on mobilising communities and providing better support for individuals. The Plan also aims to radically change the smoking environment to make it easy for all New Zealanders to live smokefree, by tackling everything about the product, including where it is sold and what is in it.
The Action Plan will have succeeded when the following aims are realised:
• Eliminate inequities in smoking rates and smoking-related illnesses
• Create a smokefree generation by increasing the number of young people who remain smokefree
• Increase the number of people who successfully quit smoking.
To achieve these outcomes, action will be taken under six focus areas:
1. Ensure Māori leadership and decision-making at all levels
2. Increase health promotion and community mobilisation
3. Increase evidence-based stop smoking services
4. Reduce the addictiveness and appeal of smoked tobacco products
5. Reduce the availability of smoked tobacco products
6. Ensure manufacturers, importers and retailers meet their legal obligations.
Each focus area is broken down into a series of sub-tasks to be actioned, to achieve the intent of each area, and realise the outcomes and vision of the Action Plan. Because of the broad and extensive nature of work, the Action Plan emphasises that “we will need to implement a comprehensive mutually reinforcing package of actions at speed.”
Policy to date has focused on influencing individual behaviours to reduce demand for tobacco and denormalise smoking. While this has had success (for some groups more than others), more could be done at a population level to change the broader smoking environment. This is a ground-breaking policy that introduces an original approach to tackling complex public health issues. We are world-leading in this policy and legislation.