'The inequities aren't closing' - Māori still a long way from Smokefree 2025 goal

Māori daily smoking rates are double the national at 14.7 percent - although that had declined from 30.4 percent over the past five years. File photo.
Photo:
Unsplash / fotografierende
The Smokefree 2025 goal is only months away, but Māori smokefree advocates are concerned that Māori smoking rates have remained more than double that of the general population.
The advocates say a 'business as usual' approach from the government - which shifts the responsibility to quit smoking onto individuals - is not going to get the country there.
The annual New Zealand Health Survey showed that in 2023/24 about 300,000 adults - 6.9 percent - were daily smokers.
The aim of the Smokefree 2025 is to have less than 5 percent of the population smoking by December.
That is already a tough ask, but for Māori daily smoking rates were two times higher at 14.7 percent - although that had declined from 30.4 percent over the past five years.
Anaru Waa, the interim chair of Te Roopu Tupeka Kore, the Māori Tobacco Control network, said Māori smoking rates were still trending down. But he was worried they will plateau, with the latest Health Survey suggesting
this is happening across the board
.
"I'm not optimistic, I think we're no closer than we were a few years ago, I'm hugely concerned about how the reductions in smoking have seemed to have stopped... and I'm hugely concerned about the vaping," he said.
Waa said the country was not on track to achieve the Smokefree 2025 goal. The goal was to get everybody below the 5 percent mark - not some people ahead of everyone else, he said.
"The trends are going in the wrong direction and... the inequities aren't closing like we wanted."
Shane Bradbrook
Photo:
RNZ / Pokere Paewai
Longtime tobacco control campaigner Shane Bradbrook said Māori people were not to blame - it was the tobacco industry's fault.
"The industry is back in alignment again politically, so it sets the kaupapa back, but I think we still have that energy and passion to make sure that we reach a goal of being tupeka kore (smokefree)."
Bradbrook - along with then-Māori Party MPs Hone Harawira and Tariana Turia - led the charge towards the Smokefree 2025 goal at the 2010 Māori Affairs Select Committee Inquiry. Following the inquiry in 2011, the government agreed to the goal for New Zealand to be smokefree by 2025.
Other countries are currently adopting the same measures and policies that Māori wanted and thought they had already won, Bradbrook said.
"Absolutely we are going backwards, I mean it's 2025. We led the fight to the Māori Affairs Select Committee, we got the report done, we got the recommendations sorted, but largely its been undone by successive governments that have terrible in terms of continuing on that policy legacy for our people," he said.
Waa said the goal of tupeka kore (smokefree) led by Turia and Harawira shifted away from what he described as the 'business as usual' approach to tobacco control which had operated previously, which had only perpetuated inequities in smoking rates.
This shifted the problem from one of individuals to a societal one, which required structural change to address, he said.
That was what the legislation brought in by the last Labour government was aimed at, he said.
"It was a game changer, it wasn't business as usual, it was making tobacco non-addictive, it was hugely reducing its access and creating a smokefree generation, that's totally different to what we've had.
"So we would have got our goal maybe not this year, but certainly next year, but this government saw otherwise and repealed it, now we're back to square one, in fact we're still fighting that plus the vaping epidemic."
Waa said vaping had not done much to reduce smoking rates among rangatahi (young people), in fact he said the majority of rangatahi who vape now have never smoked cigarettes.
"I really resist that idea that people take up vapes because they would have otherwise smoked, I think that's wrong they would have quit anyway and it's called a false base rate fallacy. Vapes themselves have been around since 2010, but we've really seen their impacts since 2015 and particularly since 2018."
About 480,000 adults (11.1 percent) were daily vapers in 2023/24, up slightly from 9.7 percent the previous year. The highest daily vaping rates were in Māori (28.8 percent), Pacific peoples (21.5 percent), and young people aged 18-24 years (26.5 percent).
Waa said while he was pessimistic about Smokefree 2025, he remained very optimistic about Māori and the fact that there were still people out in the communities and willing to do the work which had carried Māori tobacco control through all these years.
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon said the challenge was now on her and her colleagues in Parliament to decide on the next legislative steps to take on tobacco.
"I'm a mother of the Smokefree generation lost and thinking of my baby born in 2009. I was excited for what the future might bring, but with the repeal of the legislation I was gutted."
Lyndon said she was looking forward to the discussion around what Smokefree 2026 2.0 could be.
Associate Health Minister Casey Costello said the number of Māori smokers and Māori smoking rates have decreased dramatically in the past few years.
"Historically, Māori smoking rates were very high and the gains are from that higher starting point, but in the last five years, for example, 95,000 Māori have stopped smoking and the smoking rate has dropped by 52 percent."
Māori and wahine Māori in particular have benefited from using vapes, which are a much safer product, to stop smoking, she said.
"Clearly, we want to do more - the government is committed to the Smokefree targets and has an action plan in place that among other things, specifically targets those populations where there are higher smoking rates. Our stop smoking providers are also very attuned to working with Māori and what approaches work for getting Māori whanau and communities to think about quitting. I'm meeting with providers again next week to talk through these issues.
"There's a misconception about what our problem is, however - most smokers are older and have been smoking for some time, so they need help to quit and that's what we're focused on.
"When the Health Survey, which is what we use to measure smoking rates, started in 2012 there were 119,000 young - as in 18- to 24-year-old - smokers. Last year there were 19,000. For under 18s, the smoking rate is 0.6 percent - that's hugely different from when I was a teenager. Our young people aren't smoking and don't want to smoke and that's great news."
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