The government's ambition that tobacco use be a thing of the past by 2025 looks to be going up in smoke, two new reports suggest.
The Smokefree 2025 goal - as put in place by the government in 2011 - would require enormous increases in smoking cessation rates, an article published today in the New Zealand Medical Journal says.
Meanwhile, a joint report by the Maori Affairs and Health select committees released earlier this week stressed the target was "aspirational" and noted submitters had said New Zealand was well behind schedule in implementing recommendations intended to curb smoking.
"Smokefree" is considered to be fewer than 5% of adults smoking daily.
The NZMJ article, written by six University of Otago academics based at the Wellington campus, said modelling work suggested that target would be missed by non-Maori smokers, and missed by a wide margin by Maori smokers - "a particular concern given the importance of addressing ethnic inequalities in health in this country."
The academics estimated the number of people who needed to quit smoking by 2025 for the target to be achieved, and compared that to the current rate of people giving up tobacco, modified by rates of people taking up smoking.
They found almost twice as many people as stop smoking each year now would need to stub out their final cigarette in the future for the Smokefree target to be reached, and five times as many Maori.
"To achieve this goal the government will need to massively increase investment in established interventions (smoking cessation support, mass media) while continuing with substantial tobacco tax increases, or else add substantive new strategies into the intervention mix," the article said.
The academics' findings were not that far from that of the select committees, which said around 33% of Maori smoked, 22% of Pacific peoples, and 12% of European or other ethnicities.
"It was submitted that, to reach the 2025 goal, 5.2 times the usual number of Maori quitters would have to quit each year, and 1.9 times the usual number of non-Maori."
The committees recommended vaping and e-cigarettes be regulated as a pathway to help smokers quit; the expansion of subsidised nicotine replacement therapy products be explored; the effectiveness of the smoking cessation programmes, particularly those in prisons, be reviewed; the government re-examine recommendations of the 2010 Maori Affairs committee report on smoking and prioritise implementing those which would most help to reduce smoking levels.
