Whakahaere tupeka

Tobacco control

By choosing to be smokefree, supporting people to quit, and creating smokefree events, parks and sports grounds, together we can achieve the vision of a Smokefree New Zealand by 2025.

Te Hiringa Hauora is working towards a Smokefree New Zealand by 2025. Our work contributes to this goal through our mass media campaigns, community projects, information and resources. So that more people are smokefree and protected from the harm of tobacco. A Smokefree Aotearoa means that our families and whānau are smokefree and protected from the harm of tobacco.

Smoking is one of the leading preventable causes of early death in New Zealand. We are one of many organisations working toward the Government’s goal that New Zealand be smokefree by 2025. We are all working towards a smoking rate of less than 5% of the population.

By choosing to be smokefree, supporting people to quit, and creating smokefree events and smokefree environments such as parks and sports grounds, we can achieve the vision of a Smokefree Aotearoa by 2025.

We contribute to Smokefree 2025 by focusing on key population groups, particularly Māori (with a focus on young Māori women), Pacific peoples, and young adults.

What does Te Hiringa Hauora do?

Our work ensures:

  • people are more aware, motivated and able to change their smoking behaviours
  • environments and communities better promote and protect New Zealanders from tobacco-related harm.

Learn more about our tobacco control work

Research and evaluation

We undertake a wide range of research and evaluation as part of our tobacco control work. This includes the New Zealand Youth Tobacco Monitor (NZYTM),  a national school-based monitor made up of the ASH Year 10 Snapshot and our Youth Insights Survey (YIS).

We also collect and disseminate tobacco-related information through the nationally representative Health and Lifestyles Survey and the New Zealand Smoking Monitor.

We share research by collecting data from 11 different sources into one convenient website – the Tobacco Control Data Repository

View our tobacco-related research publications
 

In your community

Through smokefree.org.nz we provide information and advice about smokefree environments, the health effects of smoking, and where to seek support to stop smoking. This includes your home, your car, schools, workplaces and the community as a whole.

Learn more

The website has resources that you can share with your community including your family, workplace, sports club, community group, or school.

View and order resources

Campaigns

We contribute to Smokefree 2025 by working with and supporting population groups that are impacted by tobacco disproportionally to others, in particular, Māori, Pacific peoples, and those living in the most deprived areas. This must be viewed in the wider context of systemic inequity, and with consideration of the wider determinants of health and the ongoing impacts of colonisation.

Our tobacco control work particularly focusses on supporting Māori wāhine and their whānau, in communities where smoking rates are high. This is because Māori wāhine are disproportionally harmed by the impacts of tobacco.

Drive Smokefree for Tamariki

After a decade of campaigning, community groups across the motu celebrated a milestone when the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Act 2020 was passed in May 2020, and then came into force on 28 November 2021. After 28 November, it became illegal in Aotearoa to smoke or vape in cars carrying a child or young person under the age of 18.

Te Hiringa Hauora, with the support of the Ministry of Health, worked with community groups to deliver information so that people knew the law was coming and what it meant. A national campaign was created called Drive Smokefree for Tamariki.

The campaign ran over the eight months leading into the law change. It acknowledged that for adults, making the change from smoking in the car when tamariki are on board can be tough but it can be done, and it’s worth it for healthy tamariki.

About the campaign:

  • The audience for Drive Smokefree for Tamariki were parents, whānau and caregivers who smoke in cars with tamariki present. Ensuring the message resonated with Māori, Pasifika and low-socioeconomic communities who are disproportionately affected by smoking prevalence was critical.
  • The campaign included video, radio, print material and social media. You can watch some of the videos on the Smokefree website.
  • Te Hiringa Hauora supported community groups to share their own regional messages of the Drive Smokefree for Tamariki campaign. Grants were provided across the motu to enable communities to take a local approach of the campaign when letting their communities know about the law change.

For more information on the campaign, community grants, and the evaluation of the campaign, you can download our PDF infographic.

QuitStrong

The QuitStrong campaign celebrates that many people do quit, and the support of others can help. With a strengths-based approach, the QuitStrong campaign uses a montage of videos of support from real people encouraging someone close to them to quit smoking. The videos are not scripted making them authentic and relatable. The campaign also seeks to tackle the reality that many quit attempts are not successful. QuitStrong promotes better ways to quit by linking people to support and tools that can increase their chances of giving up the smokes for good.
For the best ways to give up the smokes for good go to QuitStrong.nz. You can also view more information on the campaign and download its resources.

Smokefreerockquest and Smokefree Tangata Beats

Young people (12 to 17-years-old) are an important audience for smokefree messages. Evidence shows that young people are less likely to engage in risky behaviours, including substance use, if a range of individual, family and school, peer and community protective factors are present. They are also less likely to take up smoking if they hold anti-tobacco and pro-smokefree attitudes and are surrounded by people who do not smoke. To support this, we work in partnership with Rockquest Promotions to sponsor Smokefreerockquest and Smokefree Tangata Beats to share these messages with young New Zealanders. Learn more about our involvement with Smokefreerockquest and Smokefree Tangata Beats.

Vaping

In October 2017 the Ministry of Health issued a position statement that said vaping has the potential to contribute to the achievement of the Smokefree 2025 goal. Te Hiringa Hauora worked with the Ministry to prepare information for the public on vaping.

The website vapingfacts.health.nz has three main parts:

  • key facts about vaping (such as what is vaping, nicotine and vaping, the risks of vaping, vaping and the law, and vaping and pregnancy)

  • information on vaping versus smoking (such as costs and relative harm)

  • vaping to quit smoking (essential tips for success, support for quitting smoking, and vaping safety, including links to the local stop smoking services).

The site is for:

  • people who are looking to quit smoking and those who support them

  • anyone interested in switching from smoking to vaping

  • people looking for New Zealand-specific information about vaping.

More information on our vaping work

Download the guide to sharing the Vaping Facts website