Recently in New Zealand an interesting research has been hold among 343 smokers. The research was linked to various price variants.

The goal was to clear out at what level the cigarette prices should be increased in order to decrease the number of smokers in the country.

According to the results, in case a pack of cigarettes would cost $20, 25% of smokers are ready to give up. The price of $50 would discourage more people from smoking - 80%. The optimal decision that could arrange everybody is $40 per pack. In this case 75% of total New Zealand population (650,000 adult smokers) are ready to quit smoking. Thus, if this situation were real, the total smoking prevalence would fall to 5%, which is already quite a lot.

This is the goal which the Government of the country plans to realize by 2025. They are going to involve in this process the media advertising, anti-smoking medical schemes and other possible means. The specialists from the Ministry of Health discussed last year the possibility to force the price up to $100 per pack by 2020, but finally they came to the conclusion that it is hardly possible.

Thus, they are concentrated now on other anti-tobacco campaigns such as the limitation of the access to tobacco products. According to this rule the cigarettes could be bough only by addicted users following the treatment schemes. Respectively, the number of cigarette retailers would be limited either.

During the hold interview a part of smokers told that in such situation they would prefer to switch to electronic cigarettes which are less dangerous to health, as they suppose. However, it hasn't been proved yet. Besides, if e-cigarettes became a new tendency in smoking the Ministry of Health warns that this product is considered as unapproved medicine up to now.