New Zealand’s plans for world-leading anti-smoking laws are to be revoked, Christopher Luxon confirmed yesterday after being sworn in as prime minister, in a move described as a “huge win for the tobacco industry.”
Former airline boss Luxon took over six weeks after his conservative National Party won national elections, ending a six-year Labour Party reign ushered in by former prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
Luxon, 53, was sworn in as head of a new coalition government by New Zealand Governor-General Cindy Kiro in a ceremony in the capital, Wellington.
Photo: AP / New Zealand Herald
“It is an honor and an awesome responsibility,” Luxon told reporters.
The conservative said he would prioritize taming inflation and bringing down interest rates, and also confirmed he would scrap a so-called “generational smoking ban” adopted last year that stops sales of tobacco to anyone born after 2008.
Luxon said the tax revenue from ongoing cigarette sales would generate welcome income for the government, but also voiced concern that the ban would create a flourishing — and untaxed — black market.
The move was criticized by anti-smoking groups as a step back for the country.
“This is a major loss for public health, and a huge win for the tobacco industry, whose profits will be boosted at the expense of Kiwi lives,” the Health Coalition Aotearoa — the Maori name for New Zealand — said in a statement.
The anti-smoking legislation, scheduled to start later this year, was designed to almost immediately reduce the number of people using tobacco products. While the number of adults smoking in New Zealand is relatively low at just 8 percent, the previous government had envisioned a future where the country was completely smoke-free.
As well as the steadily increasing age limit, the new law would have slashed the number of retailers able to sell tobacco products to a maximum of just 600 nationwide, a massive drop from the current 6,000.
Originally unveiled by then-prime minister Ardern and praised by public health experts and anti-smoking advocates, a suite of near-identical measures were recently announced in the UK.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant