WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND - OCTOBER 22: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern introduces a new traffic light system when dealing with Covid-19 onwards the Banquet Hall in Parliament on October 22, 2021 in Wellington, New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern today unveiled a new COVID-19 protection framework, which moves away from New Zealand's original elimination strategy. The new framework will see New Zealand move to a "traffic light" system to manage COVID-19 when 90 percent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated in District Health Board regions. Once a region reaches the vaccine target, the new framework will come into effect, which will see lockdowns removed and varied restrictions under red, yellow and green phases. (Photo by Rpbert Kitchin- Pool/Getty Images) 
People aged 14 in 2027, when the law is scheduled to come into effect, will never be allowed to legally purchase cigarettes in the Pacific country of five million, while the level of nicotine in all cigaretttes on sale will be reduced.
"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," said New Zealand Associate Minister of Health Ayesha Verrall in a statement.
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.
That would 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.
While existing measures like plain packaging and levies on cigarette sales had slowed tobacco consumption, the New Zealand government said, the country was unlikely to achieve its goal of under 5% of the population smoking daily by 2025 without further steps.