New Zealand has been one of the world’s great tobacco-control success stories. But the latest figures suggest we may now be reaching the limits of what our current approach can achieve.
Daily smoking has fallen from 16.4% of adults in 2011/12 to 6.8% in 2024/25.[1] Vaping has played an important role in that decline by giving many people who smoke a risk-reduced alternative to combustible cigarettes.[2]
Yet the national smoking rate has barely moved for three years. Almost 300,000 New Zealand adults still smoke every day.
More troubling is who is being left behind. Daily smoking remains at 13% among the most deprived neighbourhoods. That’s a five-fold gap between them and the least deprived. The least deprived fell below 5% daily smoking prevalence five years ago.
These disparities should force us to ask whether we are giving everyone who wants to stop smoking enough options.
I have spent decades researching smoking behaviour, Indigenous health and tobacco harm reduction. I have come to one overriding conclusion: there is no single pathway out of smoking.
Some people stop unaided. Some use nicotine replacement therapy. Some switch successfully to vaping. Others do not like vaping, cannot use it comfortably or have tried it without managing to leave cigarettes behind. Older age groups are another group being left behind.
If we are serious about getting over the line and becoming smoke-free, we need more options.
Sweden provides an important example. Earlier this year, the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs (CAN) recorded daily smoking at just 3.7%,[3] below the 5% benchmark commonly used to define a smoke-free society and almost half New Zealand’s rate.
Like New Zealand, Sweden has strong tobacco controls. But Swedish adults also have access to a wider range of smoke-free nicotine products, including tobacco-free nicotine pouches.
These small oral products do not involve combustion and produce no smoke or vapour. They require no charging or device and can be used with minimal inconvenience to others.
For some people who smoke, that may make them more acceptable than vaping or nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products such as gum or patches.
That matters because public-health interventions only work when people are willing to use them.
This is particularly relevant for communities often described as “hard to reach”, where health systems have failed to offer interventions that are accessible, age and culturally appropriate or responsive to the realities of people’s lives.
Those gaps will not be closed by simply repeating the same messages. Instead, we need to give people meaningful choices.
In this regard, Sweden’s experience with women deserves attention. Since nicotine pouches became widely available there, smoking among Swedish women has fallen sharply. Smoke Free Sweden research revealed a 49% decline in female smoking since 2016 and a substantial acceleration in quitting.[4]
Population health outcomes rarely have a single cause, and Sweden has a long history of strong tobacco control and smoke-free oral nicotine use, but the impact of oral nicotine pouches on female smoking prevalence should be heeded.
When a country achieves exceptionally low smoking prevalence while offering adults a wider range of lower-risk alternatives, policymakers elsewhere should ask what can be learned.
New Zealand currently does not allow nicotine pouches to be sold as ordinary consumer nicotine products. In practice, this means people who smoke here have fewer alternatives than their Swedish counterparts.
There is a strong case for reconsidering that position.
Legal access should not mean an unregulated market. Nicotine pouches should be subject to product standards, age restrictions, responsible marketing rules and measures designed to minimise youth uptake.
Protecting young people from nicotine and helping adults move away from cigarettes are not contradictory goals.
Nor should nicotine pouches be described as harmless. The relevant question is relative risk. Available evidence shows that pouches occupy the same lowest-risk category as nicotine replacement therapy products, which are on the WHO’s list of essential medicines.[5]
The extraordinary danger of cigarettes comes primarily from burning tobacco and repeatedly inhaling smoke. Removing combustion fundamentally changes that risk profile.
Public policy should recognise that difference.
New Zealand has already embraced this principle through its approach to vaping. We recognised that moving people away from combustible cigarettes could deliver substantial public-health gains.
That approach helped transform our smoking rates. But the people who remain may require different solutions.
As smoking prevalence falls, tobacco control becomes less about finding one answer for an entire population and more about ensuring that those carrying the greatest burden have alternatives that work for them.
New Zealand has already shown what pragmatic harm reduction can achieve. The next step is to ensure that people in the lowest income groups, Māori, older adults and people with mental health conditions – the groups with the highest smoking rates – are not left behind.
For some, the missing alternative may be one they are not currently allowed to buy. It is time to seriously consider changing that.
-ends-
Professor Marewa Glover is a behavioural scientist and director of the Centre of Research Excellence: Indigenous Sovereignty & Smoking, in Auckland.
[1] https://minhealthnz.shinyapps.io/nz-health-survey-2024-25-annual-data-explorer/_w_a58b9bda87be44d383edc23ae5d17ea0/#!/explore-indicators
[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanwpc/article/PIIS2666-6065(26)00086-6/fulltext
[3] https://www.can.se/app/uploads/2026/03/can-rapport-242-vanor-och-konsekvenser-2025.pdf
[4] https://smokefreesweden.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/power-in-a-pouch.pdf
[5] https://f1000research.com/articles/9-1225
