New Zealand’s liberal vaping laws linked to faster smoking decline compared to Australia: Study
Posted on February 10, 2025 By Colin
OUR NEW STUDY PUBLISHED THIS WEEK IN THE JOURNAL ADDICTION has revealed that the smoking rate in New Zealand fell twice as fast as in Australia between 2016 and 2023. The decline was especially notable in disadvantaged and Indigenous populations. The findings suggest that more liberal regulation of nicotine vaping in Australia could speed up the reduction in smoking and improve health and financial disparities.
New Zealand smokers have easy access to a wide range of regulated vaping products and flavours. Vapes are sold as adult consumer products from licensed retailers—just like cigarettes and alcohol. This aligns with the policies in the UK, the US, and Canada, where vaping is supported as a harm reduction strategy rather than seen as a public health threat.
In contrast, Australia has taken a highly restrictive, medicalised approach, designed to deter youth vaping. Legal vapes are only available through pharmacies, often requiring a doctor’s prescription. Most flavours are banned, and enforcement efforts have largely failed to curb the booming black market.
Smoking rates plummet in New Zealand
From 2016-2023, New Zealand’s adult daily smoking rate fell by an astonishing 10% per year, dropping from 14.5% to 6.8%. In contrast, Australia’s smoking rate declined by only 5% per year, from 12.2% to 8.3%
New Zealand now has a lower smoking rate than Australia for the first time.
The decline in smoking in each country closely reflected their vaping rates: in 2023, 9.7% of New Zealand adults vaped daily, nearly three times the rate in Australia (3.5%).
The age group with the highest vaping rate, young adults, also had the fastest decline in smoking.
Disadvantaged populations
Importantly, the study found striking reductions in smoking in New Zealand's disadvantaged communities.
Smoking prevalence fell three times faster in New Zealand’s lowest socioeconomic group than in the same population in Australia (12% per year vs 4% per year)
The faster decline in smoking mirrored the higher daily vaping rate in New Zealand compared to Australia in these communities (15.8% vs 2.8%).
Historically, smokers from low socioeconomic groups quit at a significantly slower rate than other smokers. However, the decline in smoking in this disadvantaged group in NZ was even faster than the general population which had a lower daily vaping rate of 9.7%.
Similarly, smoking in New Zealand’s Māori population declined nearly three times as fast as Australia’s Indigenous population (16% vs 6% per year from 2019/20-2023)
This was in line with the higher daily vaping rate of 23.5% for Māori and just 6.5% for Indigenous Australians (ATSI).
These findings highlight the potential of vaping to reduce health and financial disparities by providing effective alternatives to smoking for high-risk groups.
Youth vaping and smoking
Youth vaping rose more sharply in New Zealand, reaching 10% daily vaping in 2023 compared to just 3% in Australia. However, most of this rise occurred prior to the introduction of regulation in New Zealand in 2021. More recent data show a decline in youth vaping to 8.7% in 2024.
This transient rise in youth vaping and subsequent decline has also been seen in other countries such as the US.
At the same time, daily youth smoking hit record lows in both countries in 2023 (0.3% in Australia and 1.2% in New Zealand).
These findings suggest that vaping has not acted as a gateway to smoking but instead may be diverting young people away from combustible tobacco
Black market sales
Australia’s restrictive, medical model for vaping has inadvertently fuelled a thriving and increasingly violent black market. Today, more than 90% of vaping products sold in Australia come from illicit sources with no safety standards and easy access for youth.
More than 220 vape and tobacco shops have been firebombed in Australia
In contrast, New Zealand’s regulated retail system has shown no significant evidence of illicit trade
Is vaping the key factor?
Vaping is an effective and widely used aid for quitting smoking. That the populations with the highest vaping rates saw the largest declines in smoking highlights its role here.
Of course, this study is “cross-sectional”, meaning it tracks population trends rather than following individuals and cannot definitively prove vaping was the cause of the rapid fall in New Zealand smoking. However, alternative explanations are unlikely. After examining multiple possible explanations, researchers found no other credible factor to explain this dramatic decline.
Conclusion
If vaping is the key driver of this success, as appears likely, then Australia’s current approach isn’t just failing, it’s costing lives.
A more liberal, consumer-driven model—similar to that of New Zealand—
- Could accelerate the decline in smoking,
- Reduce the health gap for disadvantaged and Indigenous communities and
- Diminish the harms from an unregulated black market.
The solution isn’t to ban vaping or to try to restrict it into obscurity. It’s to regulate it sensibly—encouraging smokers to switch while implementing reasonable safeguards to protect youth. New Zealand has shown us what works—it’s time we paid attention.
Study
Other reports
Are vapes behind NZ's smoking rate falling faster than Australia's? crikey.com.au 13 February 2025
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