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New Zealand to ban cigarette sales for future generations

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New Zealand plans to ban young people from ever buying cigarettes in their lifetime in one of the world’s toughest crackdowns on the tobacco industry, arguing that other efforts to extinguish smoking were taking too long.

People aged 14 and under in 2027 will never be allowed to purchase cigarettes https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/how-will-new-zealands-lifetime-ban-cigarette-sales-work-2021-12-09 in the Pacific country of 5 million, part of proposals unveiled on Thursday that will also curb the number of retailers authorised to sell tobacco and cut nicotine levels in all products.

“We want to make sure young people never start smoking so we will make it an offence to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth,” New Zealand Associate Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall said in a statement.

“If nothing changes, it would be decades till Maori smoking rates fall below 5%, and this government is not prepared to leave people behind.”

Currently, 11.6% of all New Zealanders aged over 15 smoke, a proportion that rises to 29% among indigenous Maori adults, according to government figures.

The government will consult with a Maori health task force in the coming months before introducing legislation into parliament in June next year, with the aim of making it law by the end of 2022.

The restrictions would then be rolled out in stages from 2024, beginning with a sharp reduction in the number of authorised sellers, followed by reduced nicotine requirements in 2025 and the creation of the “smoke-free” generation from 2027.

The package of measures will make New Zealand’s retail tobacco industry one of the most restricted in the world, just behind Bhutan where cigarette sales are banned outright. New Zealand’s neighbour Australia was the first country in the world to mandate plain packaging of cigarettes in 2012.

The New Zealand government said while existing measures like plain packaging and levies on sales had slowed tobacco consumption, the tougher steps were necessary to achieve its goal of fewer than 5% of the population smoking daily by 2025.

The new rules would halve the country’s smoking rates in as few as 10 years from when they take effect, the government said.

NEW ZEALAND TEMPLATE

Like New Zealand, the United Kingdom has set goals to go smoke-free by 2030 while Canada and Sweden have targets to bring down smoking prevalence to less than 5% of their populations.

“All these aggressive targets are being introduced, yet, to date, we have still to see any country implement a coherent strategy likely to achieve a tobacco end-game. New Zealand might be a template for just that,” Jefferies analyst Owen Bennett said.

However, he did not expect the legislation to have a near-term impact on tobacco groups.

“It will be minimal, in our view. New Zealand is a very small market,” he said.

Smoking kills about 5,000 people a year in New Zealand, making it one of the country’s top causes of preventable death. Four in five smokers started before age 18, the country’s government said.

Vaping, often seen as a safer alternative to smoking and a useful aid to quitting, is also tightly regulated with sales only allowed to over 18s.

BLACK MARKET COULD EMERGE

Health authorities welcomed the crackdown, while retailers and tobacco companies expressed concern about the impact on their businesses and warned of the emergence of a black market.

“We welcome the New Zealand government’s recognition that excessive excise increases disproportionately impact smokers on lower incomes,” tobacco group Imperial Brands said, adding it was concerned about proposals to reduce nicotine levels and eventually prohibit sales.

“Prohibitions of any kind tend to play into the hands of criminal traders who peddle unregulated illicit products,” it also said.

Marlboro maker Philip Morris, which has previously said it would stop sales in the country if required by law, said it was reviewing the legislative proposal.

According to brokerage Citi, Dunhill maker British American Tobacco (BAT) is the market leader in New Zealand, with a 67% share by volume, while Imperial Brands, which sells JPS, Riverstone and Horizon cigarettes, accounts for 21%, generating about 1%-2% of its group earnings before taxes.

BAT did not respond to requests for comment.

The government did not detail how the new rules would be policed or whether they would apply to visitors to the country.

“Cigarette smoking kills 14 New Zealanders every day and two out of three smokers will die as a result of smoking,” said New Zealand Medical Association chair Alistair Humphrey in a statement.

However, the Dairy and Business Owners Group, a lobby group for local convenience stores, said while it supported a smoke-free country, the government’s plan would destroy many businesses.

(Reporting by Byron Kaye in Sydney and Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; editing by Jane Wardell, Kirsten Donovan and Lisa Shumaker)

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Canada’s Denis Shapovalov wins Belgrade Open for his second ATP Tour title

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BELGRADE, Serbia – Canada’s Denis Shapovalov is back in the winner’s circle.

The 25-year-old Shapovalov beat Serbia’s Hamad Medjedovic 6-4, 6-4 in the Belgrade Open final on Saturday.

It’s Shapovalov’s second ATP Tour title after winning the Stockholm Open in 2019. He is the first Canadian to win an ATP Tour-level title this season.

His last appearance in a tournament final was in Vienna in 2022.

Shapovalov missed the second half of last season due to injury and spent most of this year regaining his best level of play.

He came through qualifying in Belgrade and dropped just one set on his way to winning the trophy.

Shapovalov’s best results this season were at ATP 500 events in Washington and Basel, where he reached the quarterfinals.

Medjedovic was playing in his first-ever ATP Tour final.

The 21-year-old, who won the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF title last year, ends 2024 holding a 9-8 tour-level record on the season.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Talks to resume in B.C. port dispute in bid to end multi-day lockout

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VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.

The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.

The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.

The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.

The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.

MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.

In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.

“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.

“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”

In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.

“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.

The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.

“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”

The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.

The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.

A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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The Royal Canadian Legion turns to Amazon for annual poppy campaign boost

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The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.

Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.

Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.

Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.

“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.

“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”

Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.

“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.

Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.

“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”

But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.

Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.

“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.

Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.

The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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