New Zealand's Missing Piece in the Smoke-Free Strategy

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, Sept 29, 2026 - (ACN Newswire) - New Zealand is close to achieving something few countries have managed: making smoking genuinely uncommon.

The adult smoking rate has fallen to 6.8%, a number that is significantly close to 5%, which allows a country to claim smoke-free status. According to research published this year in The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific, that progress did not happen by accident. It accelerated as vaping became a mainstream alternative to cigarettes, after the introduction of an adequate regulatory framework.

Despite the progress, around 300,000 New Zealand adults still smoke, and the smoking rates remain particularly high amongst the Māori populations, older age groups and people from more disadvantaged socioeconomic contexts. Many have not switched to vaping, and there is little reason to assume they all will.

The question now is not whether New Zealand's approach has worked. It clearly has to a broad extent. The question is how to reach the people left behind. And for that, New Zealand should look closely at Sweden.

Sweden has already crossed the smoke-free threshold, with the latest figures from the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs putting daily smoking at 3.7%. The experience from this Scandinavian country offers a simple but important lesson - tobacco control works best when smokers are not only pushed away from cigarettes, but also given alternatives they are actually willing to use.

Sweden did not achieve low smoking rates by going soft on cigarettes. Like other European countries, it taxes them, restricts their marketing and requires health warnings. What made Sweden different was the range of lower-risk nicotine alternatives available to adults.

Smoking has fallen by around two-thirds since 2008, while smoking across the European Union remains far higher. One of the most striking comparisons comes from EU migrants living in Sweden. Their smoking rate is around 7.8%, compared with roughly 24% in their countries of origin. Whatever role culture plays, that difference strongly suggests that the policy environment matters too.

There is another lesson that is particularly relevant for New Zealand: one alternative is not enough.

We Are Innovation commissioned an Ipsos survey of 1,000 Swedish ex-smokers, and the results show why choice matters. Men were more likely to have moved away from cigarettes using snus, while women followed a different path. Among female ex-smokers surveyed, 56% used nicotine pouches, making pouches the most popular alternative in that group. Nicotine pouches were also the leading choice among former smokers aged 18 to 34. Across respondents, 89% said the right flavour mattered, while 61% said it was important that alternatives cost less than cigarettes.

Those findings point to a basic reality of smoking cessation that policymakers sometimes overlook: smokers are not a single, uniform group.

Some prefer vaping. Some do not want to inhale anything. Some dislike devices. Some respond to particular flavours, formats or price points. If the goal is to move people away from combustible tobacco, the more suitable alternatives adults have, the greater the chance that one of them will work.

This is where nicotine pouches could matter for New Zealand. They involve no smoke, no vapour and no device. For smokers who have not taken to vaping, they offer a fundamentally different option. That does not mean they should be unregulated. Quite the opposite.

Sweden's approach is instructive here too. Its 2022 law on tobacco-free nicotine products introduced an 18-plus age limit, labelling requirements and rules governing who can sell them. It did not respond by banning the category outright. Instead, it created a legal framework that preserved adult access while putting safeguards around youth use.

New Zealand has already pursued a similar principle with vaping: allow adult access, while tightening protections for young people where needed. The Lancet's study found that youth vaping declined following stronger youth-focused rules. That is a more sensible model than pretending prohibition eliminates demand.

The United States has also begun moving in this direction. In 2025, the Food and Drug Administration authorised certain nicotine pouch products for sale after reviewing their public-health implications.

Public health policy should distinguish between products according to the risks they create, rather than treating all nicotine use as equivalent to smoking. The stakes are substantial.

Compared with the EU average, Sweden records lower lung cancer mortality and lower cancer mortality overall. Among Swedish men, lung cancer mortality is dramatically below the EU level. Those outcomes cannot be attributed to a single product or policy, but Sweden's exceptionally low smoking rate is an important part of the picture.

New Zealand has already shown that pragmatic, evidence-based harm reduction can produce results. Vaping helped accelerate the decline in smoking because it gave smokers another way out. The country should now apply that same logic to the final stretch.

If hundreds of thousands of adults are still smoking, policymakers should be asking what additional alternatives could realistically help them stop. Nicotine pouches deserve to be part of that conversation. A legal, adults-only framework with clear product standards, age restrictions and youth protections would not undermine New Zealand's smokefree strategy, but extend it.

Sweden's experience suggests that the final mile is not achieved by narrowing adult choice, but by expanding the number of credible alternatives to cigarettes. New Zealand is already close. The next step should be to make sure the remaining smokers have more than one route out.

* Beatriz Santos is the Chief Communications Officer (CCO) at We Are Innovation. She is based in Lisbon, Portugal. Beatriz started publishing articles through her University newspaper and eventually moved to national and international reach outlets, including the well known Portuguese outlets NOVO and Observador. Her professional career includes international communications experience with the ATREVIA agency and the European Parliament. She also has two published books and is an essential part of the Students For Liberty organization in Portugal. With a focus on positive change and global cooperation, Beatriz actively seeks partnerships across the globe to promote innovative initiatives.

Contact: somosinnovacionlatam@gmail.com

SOURCE: We Are Innovation