Legal tobacco sales fall

Casey Costello announced:

Newly published data shows a continued decline in the sale of cigarettes and tobacco, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello said today.

“The figures are encouraging and are consistent with the long-term fall in smoking rates,” Ms Costello says.

“The latest annual tobacco returns show the volume of tobacco sold in New Zealand fell by more than 20 percent in 2025 compared with the previous year and has more than halved over the past decade. Since 2010, the volume of tobacco sold here has reduced by two-thirds and the number of cigarettes sold per capita is down nearly 80 percent.

A fall in legal tobacco sales is an excellent thing, if it means there has been a fall in smoking rates. So on the surface, this is good news. But I doubt there has been a 20% decline in smoking in the last year.

“It would be great if that reflected a corresponding decline in smoking rates, but it is likely that it is also to do with the availability of black-market cigarettes. It’s harder to encourage people to quit or use alternatives like vapes when they can get their hands on cheap cigarettes, which is why I asked Customs, Police, Health New Zealand, and the Ministry of Health to join forces to better tackle the illegal tobacco trade.”

To achieve the goal of fewer than 5% of NZers smoking, we need to tackle the growing black market.