Health researchers have suggested new policies to end cigarette and tobacco sales within a decade.
An article in the New Zealand Medical Journal suggests the creation of a cigarette sales quota which would gradually reduce, cutting down the nicotine content of cigarettes with a sinking lid or by nicotine tax and allowing the sale of satisfying non-combustible nicotine-only products for smokers.
Lead researcher Murray Laugesen says if the policies are adopted, the 5000 deaths that occur every year in New Zealand from smoking will all but disappear.
Both British American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco say that banning cigarette sales will simply encourage an illicit trade, which has no controls or health warnings.
But the director of the anti-smoking group ASH, Ben Youdan, says that argument is a red herring and the industry is simply trying to whip up fear.
