Smokefree 2025 could save NZ$400m in healthcare costs and banish smoking for good
New Zealand is known for being one of the most successful countries on planet earth in regards to reducing the number of smokers, and their smoking rates are now among the lowest in the world. Much of this can be attributed to very high taxes and the rising popularity of vaping, especially among younger generations.
However, Māori numbers remain high, as well as the number of smokers in poorer areas of New Zealand, and in 2025, the Ministry of Health announced a new campaign called “Smokefree 2025” that was designed to create a smoke-free generation.
This makes sense; smoking is recognised as one of most devastating public health problems in the world, and it is the number one preventable cause of death worldwide. It’s also the leading cause of preventable health inequities in the Māori culture. According to statistics from 2021/22, around one in 12 of of Kiwis smoked, compared to one in five (19.9%) among the Māori people.
This is clearly a worrying problem for New Zealand health officials – but is enough being done? Australia, for example, has not managed to reduce its high number of smokers – and many experts cite the lack of prescription vapes as being the leading reason behind this. Today, we’re going to look at the Smokefree 2025 campaign, and see whether enough has been done since to reduce the number of smokers in the country.
“Smokefree 2025”
New Zealand’s Ministry of Health revealed that around 4,500 New Zealanders die from tobacco each year, and they noted that “the country needs a new approach to banning smoking.” Several public health organisations came out to endorse the proposals, and in April 2025, the original plans for a “Smoke-Free Generation of New Zealanders” went through a public consultation stage.
Shortly after, the plans went through the legislative process, and, as expected, they didn’t face obstacles; Smokefree 2025 was the headline message of the Labor Party, which currently has a majority in New Zealand’s parliament. During their campaign, they noted:
- Smoking is responsible for one in four cancer deaths in New Zealand every year
- Around 500,000 New Zealanders smoke each day
- Māori women have the highest smoking rate in the country, with about 30% smoking daily
- Cancer is the leading cause of death for Māori women and the second leading cause of death for Māori men.
- Smoking healthcare-related costs are estimated to be around NZ$1.6 billion every year
Under the Smokefree 2025 plan, the government aims to reduce the number of smokers in the country from 6.8% to under 5%. This is expected to save up to NZ$400 million every year, so it really would be a win-win for everyone involved if this is something that can be materialsed.
How Many Adults Smoke Worldwide?
While smoking is still, clearly, a worldwide problem, looking at the data does offer some positives. For the last 2-3 decades, there has been a continous decline in the number of smokers around the world, as World Bank data shows. The screenshot below is from 2000:
This this study was carried out, vaping has grown exponentially in popularity, and today’s facts look very different.
New Zealand Smoking Statistics
In 2025, 29,260 students from 310 schools took part in the 24th ASH Year 10 Survey. The survey is one of the largest and longest running surveys of youth tobacco and vaping behaviours and attitudes in the world, and it’s also the largest smoking survey in Aotearoa – after the Census, at least. It has been carried out every year since 1999, and, back then, it found that 15.6% of Year 10 students (14-15 years of age) smoked cigarettes every day.
By the end of 2023, for teenagers aged 14 to 15, daily cigarette smoking is lower than it has ever been; just 1.2%. Only 6.8% of adults reported smoking daily, too, which is down nearly 2% from the previous year and down 10% on the decade. The number of Kiwis who’d never tried a cigarette hit a record high of 87.8%, and this was an increase over the previous year’s 85.8%.
Interestingly, this coincides with an almost 4% increase in Māori youth never smoking rates (73.8% to 77.7%), and, perhaps most worryingly, an almost 6% increase in never smoking by Māori girls (71% to 76.8%). The vaping rates of Māori girls is also a concern, with studies showing they vape more than 2.5 times the global average.
The number of Year 10 students (14-15 years of age) who regularly vape has, at least, decreased significantly for the second year running, as shown in the annual ASH survey of Kiwi youth, and it revealed that the rate dropped by almost 2 percent (18.2% in 2022, 16.4% in 2023). Still, though, in the poorest fifth of the population, one in four adults still smokes – which is likely to be the next target of smoke-free campaigns.
(Tangible) Costs Of Smoking
One of the reasons why governments around the world have been so keen to reduce the number of smokers, is the costs associated with it. It’s not just the health effects, and the tangible costs of smoking include:
- Family members caring for someone with a smoking-related disease
- Health care costs, including the cost of hospital admissions
- Lost productivity and worker absences
Intangible costs of smoking
- Years of life lost from premature deaths
- Lost quality of life from living with a serious illness
Thanks to a 2019 Australian report, the tangible costs of smoking in New Zealand include NZ$1.1 billion in lost productivity and worker absences, NZ$0.45 billion for family members caring for someone with a smoking-related disease, and NZ$1.6 billion in health care costs – and this includes the cost of some 340,000 hospital admissions to treat smoking-related conditions.
Intangible costs (ones that can’t easily be worked out or calculated) – like the years of life lost from premature deaths in that year, or lost quality of life from living with serious illnesses – are estimated, roughly, to be in the region of around NZ$25 billion/year.
Smoker Hospitalisations: Costs and Numbers
While research into the costs and figures behind smoker-related hospitalisations is quite hard to calculate, there are some resources available. In 2017, for example, an Iranian research paper found that the mean cost of hospitalisation per patient was 67% higher for current smokers, and 17% higher for former smokers, when compared to those who have never smoked. This, clearly, indicates that a smoker is a more expensive patient than a non-smoker, on average.
It is also much more common for smokers to end up in a hospital, up to 40 per cent compared to a never smoker. These stats are pretty much universal for all countries in the world, which is why organisations like the World Health Organisation (WHO) work with so many partners and governments around the world to curb smoking rates.
References
- https://www.ash.org.nz/youth_regular_vaping_decreases_for_2nd_year_in_a_row_in_ash_year_10_survey_daily_smoking_remains_very_low
- https://casinos.dashtickets.nz/healthcare-system/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5804450
- https://globalactiontoendsmoking.org/news-and-press/press/new-zealands-smoking-rates-plummet-while-australias-stall/
