Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill
This bill undoes three big changes to tobacco law that were passed in 2022 but hadn't yet taken effect. Those changes would have: cut the number of shops allowed to sell cigarettes, made cigarettes have very little nicotine, and banned selling cigarettes to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009. This bill scraps all three of those planned changes. The minimum buying age stays at 18, but otherwise the rules around buying and selling cigarettes go back to how they were before 2022.
What this affects
Tap a topic to see how this bill touches it — with the parts of the text it’s based on.
The bill removes planned rules that would have reduced where cigarettes can be sold, how much nicotine they can contain, and who can legally buy them.
it removes requirements for retailers of smoked tobacco products to apply to, and be approved by, the Director-General of Health before selling smoked tobacco products
it removes the requirement for smoked tobacco products to meet a low nicotine content limit of 0.8 mg/g
it retains a minimum sales age of 18 years for smoked tobacco products rather than providing for a smokefree generation under which sales to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 would have been prohibited
Progress through Parliament
Have your say
Submissions open once a bill reaches the select committee stage. In the meantime, you can write to your local MP about it.
Write to your MPBill text sourced from legislation.govt.nz (Parliamentary Counsel Office). Arapono’s summary and breakdown are drafted with AI grounded in that official text and reviewed by an Arapono editor for accuracy and neutrality before publishing. Arapono is non-partisan and takes no position on this bill.