The Question Australia Refuses to Ask: Why Is New Zealand Succeeding?

For more than a decade, Australian politicians, health departments and tobacco control organisations have presented New Zealand as a close policy cousin. Both countries pursued high tobacco taxes, adopted plain packaging, invested heavily in anti-smoking campaigns and set ambitious goals to reduce smoking prevalence.

Yet in recent years, the two countries have begun moving in very different directions.

A newly published paper, NZ’s Accelerating Smoking Decline by Robert Beaglehole, Ruth Bonita, and Ben Youdan, highlights just how dramatic that divergence has become. The paper’s findings are difficult to ignore because, after decades of gradual progress, New Zealand experienced a statistically significant acceleration in smoking decline after 2018/19. Daily smoking prevalence fell below 7% of adults by 2022/23, and, among Māori, one of the populations historically most affected by smoking-related disease, smoking prevalence was cut roughly in half within six years.

The authors are not fringe commentators but experienced tobacco control researchers who have spent much of their careers advocating for stronger tobacco control policies. Yet the conclusions they reach challenge one of the central assumptions that now dominates Australian nicotine policy. The uncomfortable reality is that New Zealand’s smoking decline accelerated during precisely the same period that vaping became widely available. While this does not prove causation, it does raise a question that Australian policymakers seem increasingly unwilling to confront: what if vaping has been helping smokers quit?

The most striking finding in the paper comes from the authors’ use of joinpoint regression analysis. For years, smoking prevalence in New Zealand had been declining steadily but relatively slowly, with annual reductions averaging approximately 3.5%. After 2018/19, however, the rate of decline accelerated dramatically, with smoking prevalence falling at almost 18% per year. In simple terms, smoking did not merely continue to decline; the pace of decline increased around fivefold. This was not a minor fluctuation, but a statistically significant shift in trend, and the same pattern appeared among Māori populations, where smoking reductions also accelerated substantially during the same period.

When researchers look for explanations, timing matters, and in this case, it is difficult to ignore. While smoking was collapsing, vaping was rising. Daily vaping among adults increased from less than 1% in 2015 to approximately 12% by 2024/25, while among Māori adults, vaping prevalence reached around 28%.

The authors are careful with their language and repeatedly acknowledge that ecological studies cannot prove causation. Population-level associations do not establish that one factor caused another. Nevertheless, they make it clear that the relationship deserves serious consideration because the timing, magnitude, and acceleration align, and the acceleration is statistically significant. Importantly, there is no obvious alternative explanation capable of accounting for the scale of the change.

Critics of tobacco harm reduction often argue that smoking declines are simply the result of conventional tobacco control measures such as taxation, plain packaging and public education campaigns. The problem with that explanation is that these measures were already in place. New Zealand had not suddenly discovered tobacco taxes in 2019, nor had it suddenly introduced plain packaging. These policies had existed for years and were associated with the earlier gradual decline in smoking. The authors point out that the acceleration occurred after these measures were already established, suggesting that something else had changed.

The most obvious candidate is the rapid growth of vaping, not because vaping magically eliminates smoking overnight, but because it provides smokers with an alternative source of nicotine that is substantially less harmful than combustible tobacco. If large numbers of smokers switched from cigarettes to vaping, exactly the pattern observed in New Zealand would be expected.

Perhaps the most politically sensitive aspect of the paper concerns youth smoking. For years, Australian policymakers have justified increasingly restrictive vaping policies by arguing that vaping risks creating a new generation of smokers. The New Zealand experience tells a very different story.

Youth smoking continued to fall, with daily smoking among younger teenagers dropping to approximately 1%. The paper reports no evidence that youth smoking is increasing, meaning there has been no smoking resurgence, no gateway epidemic and no reversal of decades of progress. Instead, youth smoking has reached levels that would have seemed almost unimaginable only a generation ago.

This directly challenges the claim that widespread access to vaping inevitably leads to widespread youth smoking because, if such a gateway effect existed on a meaningful population scale, New Zealand should be showing evidence of it. According to the paper, it is not.

Critics frequently point to rising youth vaping rates in New Zealand as evidence of policy failure. The paper acknowledges that youth vaping has increased, but that is not where the story ends.

In 2021, New Zealand introduced tighter regulations governing vaping products and marketing and, rather than continuing to rise indefinitely, youth vaping began to fall. Daily youth vaping declined from around 10% in 2022 to approximately 7% in 2025, while regular youth vaping fell from about 20% in 2021 to 11% in 2025.

In other words, New Zealand appears to have achieved something that many policymakers insist is impossible. Smoking continued to fall, youth smoking remained extremely low, and youth vaping also began declining. This occurred not through prohibition but through regulation, highlighting an important reality: a legal market can be regulated, whereas an illicit market cannot.

The significance of this paper extends beyond academic debate because it arrives at a time when parts of the tobacco control community remain deeply opposed to tobacco harm reduction despite mounting evidence from countries that have embraced it. One of the clearest examples of this tension can be seen when the findings of NZ’s Accelerating Smoking Decline are compared with a recent commentary by Professor Kenneth Blum and colleagues.

Taken together, the two papers present fundamentally different approaches to evidence. The New Zealand paper examines measurable population-level outcomes and asks what factors may have contributed to one of the fastest smoking declines ever observed. The Blum commentary, by contrast, appears far more concerned with defending a precautionary position than explaining the real-world outcomes that New Zealand has experienced.

The contrast is striking.

The New Zealand paper documents smoking prevalence falling at an unprecedented rate, Māori smoking rates declining dramatically, youth smoking remaining at record lows, and youth vaping subsequently declining following tighter regulation. The Blum commentary largely sidesteps these outcomes and instead returns to familiar arguments about uncertainty, industry motives, youth uptake and historical analogies.

Its central comparison between vaping and the era of “light” and “low-tar” cigarettes is particularly problematic. The analogy relies on the assumption that the two situations are comparable when, in reality, they are fundamentally different. Low-tar cigarettes still expose smokers to smoke, tar, carbon monoxide and thousands of combustion products. Vaping eliminates combustion. By treating these products as analogous, the commentary risks obscuring one of the most important distinctions in tobacco harm reduction.

More concerning is the commentary’s apparent lack of engagement with the central question raised by the New Zealand data. If vaping is not contributing to accelerated smoking declines, what is? The commentary offers extensive discussion of potential risks but provides little convincing explanation for why smoking rates collapsed so rapidly after vaping became widespread.

This omission is significant because scientific commentary should attempt to explain observed outcomes, not simply reiterate concerns that existed before those outcomes occurred.

The paper also appears to place disproportionate emphasis on the tobacco industry’s involvement in vaping markets. While the industry’s history of deception is undeniable, the health impact of a product should ultimately be judged by evidence regarding its risks and benefits rather than by the identity of its manufacturer. The commentary frequently invokes industry misconduct but spends comparatively little time addressing whether smokers who switch away from combustible tobacco may be reducing their exposure to harm.

Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the commentary is its underlying focus. Rather than concentrating primarily on smoking-related disease, it increasingly appears concerned with nicotine use itself. This represents a significant departure from the traditional public health objective of reducing smoking-related death and disease. If nicotine becomes the primary target rather than smoking, then even successful transitions away from combustible tobacco can be portrayed negatively, regardless of their potential health benefits.

The commentary’s reliance on precautionary reasoning further reinforces this impression. The argument repeatedly returns to the proposition that, because all long-term risks of vaping are not yet known, policymakers should remain highly sceptical of harm reduction claims. However, this framing largely ignores the fact that smokers are not choosing between vaping and perfect health. They often choose between vaping and continued smoking.

This is where the commentary appears weakest. It spends considerable time discussing theoretical future risks while paying comparatively little attention to the real-world consequences of maintaining the status quo. The risks associated with vaping are explored in detail, while the risks associated with continuing to smoke often appear as little more than background assumptions.

By contrast, the New Zealand paper documents what actually happened in a real population. Smoking declined faster than ever before, Māori smoking prevalence fell dramatically, youth smoking continued to decline, and youth vaping later declined as regulations matured. These outcomes do not prove that vaping caused the changes, and the authors themselves are careful to acknowledge that ecological studies cannot establish causation. However, they do demonstrate that widespread access to vaping did not produce the public health catastrophe often predicted by opponents of harm reduction.

Ultimately, the Blum commentary reads less like an objective assessment of New Zealand’s experience and more like a defence of a long-standing ideological position within tobacco control. Rather than allowing observed outcomes to challenge existing assumptions, it appears to interpret those outcomes through a framework that was largely established before the evidence emerged.

The result is a commentary that seems more committed to preserving scepticism about harm reduction than to seriously examining what New Zealand may be teaching the rest of the world. At a time when smoking prevalence has reached historic lows and disadvantaged populations have experienced unprecedented declines, the reluctance to engage with the implications of the data is difficult to ignore.

In many respects, the New Zealand paper and the Blum commentary represent two competing visions of public health. One begins with observed outcomes and asks what can be learned from them. The other begins with precaution and asks why those outcomes should not alter existing beliefs.

Australia, meanwhile, has chosen a radically different path. While New Zealand embraced regulated consumer access, Australia moved toward increasingly restrictive access arrangements. The justification was straightforward: restrict vaping, reduce youth uptake and protect public health.

Yet the outcomes increasingly raise questions.

Australia now faces a rapidly expanding illicit tobacco market. Illegal vape sales remain widespread despite repeated crackdowns. Organised crime groups have become deeply involved in both markets. Governments are losing billions in tobacco excise revenue. Smoking declines appear to have slowed significantly compared with previous decades.

Meanwhile, New Zealand has experienced one of the fastest smoking declines ever recorded.

The contrast is becoming increasingly difficult to explain away.

Ultimately, the difference between the two papers could not be clearer. One is largely a warning about what might happen, while the other is an analysis of what did happen. One emphasises uncertainty and theoretical risks, while the other documents measurable reductions in smoking prevalence across an entire nation. One views vaping primarily through the lens of precaution, while the other suggests that vaping may have contributed to one of the most significant smoking declines observed anywhere in the world.

It raises an uncomfortable question for policymakers and public health advocates. When real-world evidence increasingly points in one direction, how long can theoretical concerns continue to outweigh observed outcomes?

That question sits at the centre of the growing divide in global tobacco control.

New Zealand’s experience suggests that harm reduction may have accelerated the decline of smoking and delivered benefits to populations that have historically carried the greatest burden of tobacco-related disease. The Blum commentary reflects a school of thought that remains deeply sceptical of that possibility.

For Australian policymakers, the contrast is impossible to ignore. One neighbouring country has achieved accelerated smoking declines, record low youth smoking, falling youth vaping and a regulated legal market. Australia, meanwhile, continues to grapple with expanding illicit tobacco and vape markets, declining excise revenues and growing evidence that its prohibition-focused approach has created significant unintended consequences.

Which brings us back to the question that many Australian policymakers seem reluctant to confront.

If New Zealand achieved accelerated smoking declines, very low youth smoking, falling youth vaping and a regulated legal market, why is Australia moving in the opposite direction?

The answer to that question may determine whether Australia’s nicotine policies are remembered as a public health success or as one of the most consequential policy mistakes in modern tobacco control.