Smokefree/Auahi Kore

Smokefree/Auahi Kore is about youth, whānau and communities living a smokefree life.

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.

Our goal - New Zealanders reject tobacco and live a smokefree lifestyle.

Ten facts about tobacco

Tobacco-related costs to the health system are estimated to be about $1.7 billion per year (about 1.1% of GDP).
Tobacco use is responsible for about 25% of cancer deaths in New Zealand.
Smoking is responsible for the death of 5,000 New Zealanders each year.
Half of all long-term smokers will die from a smoking-related disease.
On average, smokers lose 15 years of life.
The 2009 New Zealand Tobacco Use Survey showed that 21% of New Zealand adults (15 to 64 years) smoked.
Smoking was highest among Māori (45%) and Pacific peoples (30.3%).
Smoking decreased significantly for females between 2006 (24%) and 2009 (21%).
Daily smoking among Year 10 students (14 to 15 years) also decreased significantly between 2000 and 2009 – 16% to 6% for girls and from 14.0% to 5% for boys.
The proportion of 14 and 15-year-olds that had never smoked increased from 33% in 2000 to 64% in 2009.

What does HSC do?

While our overall goal is for New Zealanders to reject tobacco and live a smokefree lifestyle, the key focus is to decrease smoking among young Māori (because smoking imposes a disproportionate burden on Māori).

Young people

Our youth work provides information and messages to young people to:

provide information and promote messages to young people to increase their anti-tobacco and pro-smokefree attitudes
denormalise and deglamourise tobacco use by reducing young people's exposure to tobacco and smoking
implement a schools project to effectively address smoking in the school setting.

A key part of our work with youth is the very successful Smoking Not Our Future.

Adults

The focus of our work in this area is to provide information and messages to all adult New Zealanders in order to:

increase knowledge and abilities of parents and caregivers to help them reduce the number of young Māori exposed to smoking and tobacco
increase the number of quit attempts and the number of supported quit attempts
maintain public support for tobacco control measures.

Schools

HSC works with schools to increase the number of them that have smokefree/auahi kore policies - a smokefree school is a sign of wellbeing, not just a sign on the gate. Visit the Smokefree Schools website for more information.

Smokefree 2025

New Zealand is committed to a goal of a Smokefree Aotearoa by 2025. This will mean:

that our children and grandchildren will be free from tobacco and enjoy tobacco-free lives
that almost noone will smoke (less than 5% of the population will be current smokers
it will be very difficult to sell or supply tobacco.

Find out more...

Research and Evaluation

The HSC undertakes a wide range of research and evaluation activities.

Check out the research findings page to access HSC's research reports and publications.

New Zealand Smoking Monitor
The HSC runs a continuous survey on behalf of the Ministry of Health to measure current and changing knowledge, attitudes and behaviours relating to smoking and quitting. It offers a unique way to monitor trends over an extended period of time.

This information sheet gives a brief overview of the survey.

This participants' information sheet might be helpful if you have been asked to take part in this survey.

Find out more

To find out more about our work in this area check out: