New Zealand today passed into law a unique plan to phase out tobacco smoking by imposing a lifetime ban on young people buying cigarettes.
The law states that tobacco can't ever be sold to anybody born on or after January 1, 2009.
It means the minimum age for buying cigarettes will keep increasing. In theory, someone trying to buy a pack of cigarettes 50 years from now would need ID to show they were at least 63 years old.
But health authorities hope smoking will fade away well before then. They have a stated goal of making New Zealand smoke-free by 2025.
The new law also reduces the number of retailers allowed to sell tobacco from about 6,000 to 600 and decreases the amount of nicotine allowed in tobacco that is smoked.
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