CDS (I) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 116 of 120

Correct — C, New Zealand. New Zealand's Smokefree 2025 goal is the policy the stem describes — the target year is 2025 and 'smokefree' in it is conventionally read as daily smoking prevalence below five per cent. To reach it the government announced a plan in December 2021, which became the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022. That Act did three unusual things at once: it cut the number of retailers allowed to sell smoked tobacco, capped the nicotine permitted in those products, and — the measure that drew world attention — prohibited the sale of tobacco to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009, creating a generation that would never be able to buy it legally. No other country in the option set had adopted anything of the kind.

• (a)England — England has long-standing tobacco-control targets and later discussed a generational sales ban of its own, but the announcement in the news at this time, with 2025 as its year, was New Zealand's.
• (b)Germany — Germany has some of the looser tobacco advertising rules in western Europe and has set no goal of this kind. It is the least likely candidate in the list.
• (d)Russia — Russia has raised tobacco taxes and restricted smoking in public places, but it has announced no smokefree-generation law or a five per cent prevalence target for 2025.

Tobacco control works through a familiar set of levers — taxation, plain packaging, advertising bans, smoke-free public places and cessation support — and international coordination runs through the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, to which India is a party. New Zealand's plan went further than the standard toolkit by adding a supply-side measure aimed at a birth cohort rather than at an age, so that the legal purchase age would move up by one year every year and never come back down. That design is what made it a global talking point.

Country-and-policy questions are best answered from a distinctive detail rather than from general impressions of how strict a country is. The distinctive detail here is the smokefree-generation idea, and it belongs to New Zealand. A second anchor is the year: the goal is named Smokefree 2025, so the year in the stem is part of the policy's own title. The story has since reversed, and honestly so — a new coalition government repealed the retail-reduction, denicotinisation and smokefree-generation provisions in early March 2024, so the law the question refers to is no longer on the statute book even though the Smokefree 2025 aspiration preceded it. Anyone using this question today should know both halves.

• New Zealand's Smokefree 2025 goal targets the year 2025, with 'smokefree' conventionally read as daily smoking prevalence below five per cent.
• The plan was announced in December 2021 and legislated as the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022.
• The Act reduced the number of tobacco retailers, capped nicotine content, and banned tobacco sales to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009.
• Those three provisions were repealed in early March 2024 by a subsequent government.
• International tobacco control is coordinated through the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, to which India is a party.

• Guessing a large European country because it feels more likely to legislate. The generational ban was New Zealand's.
• Treating the 2025 in the question as an arbitrary date. It is part of the policy's own name.
• Presenting the smokefree-generation law as current. Its key provisions were repealed in March 2024.

As a which-country item on a distinctive policy, or as a statements question on the content of a tobacco-control law.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The distinctive feature of New Zealand's Smoked Tobacco Amendment Act of 2022 was that it

  • (a)banned all tobacco advertising
  • (b)prohibited tobacco sales to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009
  • (c)raised the legal smoking age to 25 years
  • (d)nationalised the tobacco industry

  Answer(b) prohibited tobacco sales to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 — the smokefree-generation measure, since repealed.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  World No-Tobacco Day is observed every year on

  • (a)31 May
  • (b)7 April
  • (c)1 December
  • (d)12 August

  Answer(a) 31 May — observed under the World Health Organization. 7 April is World Health Day and 1 December World AIDS Day.