Professor Lisa McNally

I mean, myself, I was a nightmare.

I started when I was 13, but managed to quit.

But in the UK alone, we have 125,000 people between the ages of 18 and 25 who start smoking every year.

So that's a lot of new recruits for the tobacco industry, isn't it?

And

Once you're addicted, it's tough.

You know, anyone who's ever smoked knows this.

So the best thing we can do is just provide the opportunity for people coming through now into adulthood to be part of a smoke-free generation.

That's the point of all this.

That's right, yeah.

So New Zealand, we're all ready to go on this.

But as you said, there was an election yesterday

And there was a lot of lobbying from tobacco industry.

And yeah, it was scrapped when the new government come in place.

That's not going to happen here because we've got cross-party support.

And of course, the smoking rates in Ireland, you've got a great ambition to reduce it down to 5%.

But the fact is, while smoking reduced in Ireland...

rapidly up to 2023.

It's stalled now and it's stuck at 17%.

It's been stuck since 2019.