- New Zealand’s adult smoking rate began falling much faster after 2018/19, as vaping became more widely available and was recognised as a quit aid.
- The annual rate of decline in daily smoking became around five times faster among both all adults and Māori adults.
- Daily adult smoking has now plateaued below seven per cent, with remaining smoking increasingly concentrated among Māori, older adults and more deprived communities.
- Youth smoking remains very low, while youth vaping has fallen since tighter regulation was introduced.
New Zealand’s smoking rate began falling far faster after vaping became widely available and recognised as a quit aid, according to a new paper in a Lancet journal.
The paper says New Zealand’s long-standing tobacco control measures helped push smoking down over several decades, but the decline was slow until around 2018/19.
That changed as nicotine vaping moved into the mainstream, following legal and regulatory clarification and the Ministry of Health’s recognition of vaping as a substantially less harmful alternative to smoking.
The authors, Robert Beaglehole, Ruth Bonita and Ben Youdan, say the timing is revealing. Their analysis found a statistically significant acceleration in the decline of adult daily smoking after 2018/19, alongside a rapid rise in vaping.
They stress that the figures do not prove vaping caused the fall in smoking. But they say the timing, the scale of the change and the groups most affected make a contributory effect plausible.
Five-fold acceleration
Before 2018/19, daily smoking among New Zealand adults aged 15 and over had been falling by 3.5 per cent a year. Between 2018/19 and 2022/23, that accelerated to 17.9 per cent a year, around a fivefold increase in the annual rate of decline.
The shift was especially marked among Māori adults, who have historically had much higher smoking rates. Before 2018/19, Māori daily smoking was falling by 2.2 per cent a year. After 2018/19, it fell by 13.3 per cent a year through to 2024/25, also around five times faster.
The paper, published in The Lancet Regional Health – Western Pacific, says Māori smoking rates halved in six years, while daily smoking in the total adult population fell below seven per cent by 2022/23.
Official New Zealand Health Survey data for 2024/25 puts adult daily smoking at 6.8 per cent, down from 16.4 per cent in 2011/12. Daily adult vaping stood at 11.7 per cent, up from 0.9 per cent when first measured in 2015/16.
Among Māori adults, the latest official data shows daily smoking at 15.0 per cent and daily vaping at 27.5 per cent.
From tobacco control to harm reduction
New Zealand had already introduced a wide range of tobacco control policies before vaping took off.
These included smoke-free public spaces, graphic health warnings, plain packaging and a decade of substantial annual tobacco excise increases from 2010. In 2011, the country adopted its Smokefree 2025 goal, generally understood as reducing daily smoking to below 5 per cent across the population.
But the Lancet paper says those measures were associated with gradual declines, rather than the rapid fall seen after 2018/19.
By 2015/16, 15 per cent of adults and 36 per cent of Māori adults still smoked daily. The authors say that, at the pre-2018 rate of decline, New Zealand would not have come close to its smokefree goal for decades.
The paper argues that vaping appears to have added a harm reduction route alongside traditional tobacco control, particularly for groups with higher smoking rates.
Youth smoking remains low
The key policy concern is whether wider access to vapes risks increasing youth smoking.
The paper says youth smoking in New Zealand remains historically low. Daily smoking among 15 to 25-year-olds has almost been eliminated, while daily smoking among 14 to 15-year-olds has halved to 1 per cent since 2015.
However, youth nicotine use has risen because of vaping. Around 14 per cent of 15 to 17-year-olds reported daily nicotine use, mainly vaping, in 2024/25, compared with 3.4 per cent in 2017/18.
The authors note that much of the rise in youth vaping happened before 2021, when New Zealand had no legislative controls on the vaping market or products.
After vaping regulations came in, including an age limit of 18 and tighter sales rules, youth vaping began to fall. Daily youth vaping dropped from 10 per cent in 2022 to seven per cent in 2025, while regular youth vaping fell from 20 per cent in 2021 to 11 per cent in 2025.
The rules have since been tightened further to reduce the appeal of vapes, restrict flavours, prohibit disposable products and lower nicotine content.
Smoking has plateaued
The rapid decline has now slowed. Adult daily smoking has plateaued below seven per cent over the past three years. The paper says this should not be read simply as policy failure. Instead, it reflects a changing smoking population.
As younger and less entrenched smokers move away from cigarettes, smoking is increasingly concentrated among people who may need more targeted support. The remaining burden is heavier among Māori, people living in the most deprived communities and older adults with long smoking histories.
The latest official Health Survey shows daily smoking at 12.9 per cent in the most deprived neighbourhoods, compared with 2.4 per cent in the least deprived. Daily vaping is also higher in the most deprived areas, at 21.1 per cent compared with 7.2 per cent.
The authors say further progress will depend less on broad population-wide measures and more on targeted, equity-focused cessation and harm reduction support.
A lesson for tobacco policy
The paper also points to New Zealand’s abandoned Smokefree 2022 legislation, which would have sharply reduced tobacco retail outlets and required very low nicotine levels in smoked tobacco products. The measures were repealed in early 2024 before being implemented.
The authors argue that the recent plateau in smoking began before the repeal, and is better explained by the profile of the people still smoking.
Their central conclusion is that harm reduction can work alongside conventional tobacco control, provided regulation protects young people without removing less harmful options for adults who smoke.
For policymakers, the New Zealand experience offers both a clear warning and a clear opportunity. Youth vaping needs active control, but adult access to lower-risk alternatives may also be one significant reason smoking has fallen faster.
The paper does not claim vaping alone explains New Zealand’s progress. It does suggest that, when combined with strong tobacco control and proportionate regulation, vaping may have helped push smoking down at a pace older policies had not achieved.
