NZ’s Falling Teen Vaping and Near-Zero Smoking: New Data Confirms the Absurdity of the FCTC’s Dirty Ashtray Award

New Zealand has just delivered one of the clearest global examples that well-regulated vaping and other lower-risk nicotine products can reduce youth harm rather than increase it. New results from the ASH Year 10 Snapshot Survey, one of the world’s largest annual youth nicotine studies, reveal that teen vaping in New Zealand is falling at one of the steepest rates ever recorded. Regular vaping among 14- and 15-year-olds has halved since its 2021 peak, and daily vaping—after reaching 10 percent in 2022—has already dropped to just over 7 percent. These findings are particularly striking given that New Zealand has just been handed the “Dirty Ashtray Award” at the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control’s COP11 meeting in Geneva, a symbolic (and certainly undeserving condemnation) that accused New Zealand of failing youth, reversing progress on policy, and worsening Indigenous health outcomes. Yet the evidence presented by New Zealand shows exactly the opposite: the country has dramatically reduced smoking rates by embracing safer nicotine alternatives, and at the same time has managed to bring youth vaping down sharply.

Public-health leaders in New Zealand attribute this success not to bans or punitive restrictions, but to targeted, proportionate measures designed to limit youth access while preserving vaping as a vital harm-reduction tool for adult smokers. The country tightened enforcement against underage sales, strengthened marketing restrictions, and improved product-safety standards, while deliberately not adopting prohibitionist policies that push people back to cigarettes or into illicit markets. Professor Robert Beaglehole, one of New Zealand’s most respected tobacco-control advocates, emphasises that this balanced approach is exactly why the country is succeeding: the government managed to protect young people without undermining adults who rely on vaping as a far less harmful alternative to combustible tobacco. The results speak for themselves. Daily smoking among 14- and 15-year-olds has nearly vanished, now sitting at around one percent. This collapse in youth smoking is historically rare and globally significant, demonstrating that vaping has displaced—not fuelled—combustible tobacco among teenagers.

Researchers note that not all groups have benefited equally, as daily vaping remains higher among Māori students, highlighting the need for more tailored interventions and culturally grounded cessation strategies. Associate Professor Andrew Waa has suggested that some young people may be shifting from vapes to oral nicotine products, a trend policymakers will need to monitor carefully. Yet these challenges do not change the overarching reality: New Zealand has achieved an exceptionally rare combination of falling teen vaping and falling teen smoking, while adult smoking continues to decline faster than in almost any comparable country. This is precisely why the “Dirty Ashtray Award” appeared to many observers as political theatre rather than a serious public-health analysis.

The WHO’s tobacco control failure exposed

New Zealand’s achievements are not an isolated case but part of a growing global pattern. Countries that offer affordable, appealing lower-risk nicotine alternatives see smoking decline much more rapidly than those that rely on abstinence-only approaches. Sweden—on track to become the world’s first smoke-free nation—has achieved a smoking rate of just over five percent, largely due to snus and, more recently, nicotine pouches. Norway has seen a similar collapse in daily smoking, especially among young adults, driven by the popularity of snus. Japan has experienced one of the fastest declines in cigarette sales ever recorded following the introduction of heated tobacco, with consumption falling by more than 40 percent in six years. In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service openly endorses vaping as a quitting aid, and tens of thousands of smokers transition successfully each year. Across these regions, the evidence is consistent: when adult smokers have access to safer nicotine products, they move away from cigarettes, and national smoking rates fall more quickly.

Major scientific institutions recognise this reality. Public Health England, Health Canada, the U.S. National Academies, and the UK’s Royal College of Physicians have all affirmed the overwhelming difference in risk between combustible and non-combustible nicotine products. Their conclusion is unequivocal: it is the smoke—not the nicotine—that causes the vast majority of harm. Removing combustion reduces health risks by at least 95 percent. Despite this, the FCTC has largely refused to integrate harm-reduction science into its strategic framework, clinging instead to an abstinence-only model that most other areas of public health abandoned long ago. Former senior WHO leaders Derek Yach and Tikki Pang recently criticised this rigidity in a joint article with economist Chris Snowdon and Clearing the Air co-founder Peter Beckett. They argued that the FCTC’s resistance to innovation is not only outdated but dangerous, particularly for low- and middle-income countries where smoking prevalence remains extremely high. They warned that failing to embrace harm-reduction tools could condemn millions of people to decades more preventable disease and economic burden.

Their critique also highlighted a growing divide in global tobacco control. While Northern Europe, the UK, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand are reducing smoking through innovation, large regions of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa continue to see male smoking rates above 45 percent. According to Yach and Pang, this gap reflects fundamentally different attitudes toward science, technology, and public-health pragmatism. They also blamed a lack of accurate medical education, noting that many clinicians remain unaware of harm-reduction evidence because scientific societies and journals fail to communicate it. As a result, doctors are often ill-equipped to advise smokers about safer alternatives, even as millions continue to die from diseases linked to combustible tobacco.

New Zealand’s results shame prohibition

The controversy surrounding COP11 exposed just how deeply ideology now shapes global tobacco-control discourse. New Zealand was censured despite presenting world-leading reductions in smoking, while other nations with far worse outcomes were celebrated. Harm-reduction advocates such as Nancy Loucas of CAPHRA described the award as an act of “ideological obstruction,” highlighting a tragic, but at this point unequivocal truth: the FCTC prefers political orthodoxy over real-world success. Of course we are not even getting into the fact that once again COP11 excluded harm-reduction experts, consumer groups, and dissenting scientists, while allowing WHO-aligned NGOs to dominate the agenda. This reinforces the status quo: an FCTC which is no longer a neutral public-health body but an institution increasingly shaped by anti-nicotine activism.

Meanwhile New Zealand’s progress demonstrates a simple truth: when smokers are given access to appealing, regulated, lower-risk alternatives, they switch, and smoking declines rapidly. When youth protections focus on access control rather than product bans, teen vaping can fall without reigniting cigarette use. And when evidence is prioritised over ideology, countries achieve real, measurable health gains. New Zealand should be celebrated as a model of effective harm reduction, not condemned with symbolic awards divorced from reality. With combustible tobacco still killing nearly eight million people annually, global public-health institutions must decide whether they want to eliminate nicotine entirely—an unrealistic and unnecessary goal—or eliminate the harms caused overwhelmingly by combustion. New Zealand’s success makes the correct choice clear. The only question is whether the WHO is willing to follow the evidence.

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