Ten years of a national law covering smoke-free school grounds: a brief review

It is now over 10 years since a New Zealand law1 requiring all preschools and schools to become completely smoke-free (including all grounds) became operational in 2004. Previously, indoor school areas had been required to be largely smoke-free, but there was ‘variable compliance’.2 ,3 As there is limited literature on the international long-term experience (outside of California4) with laws covering outdoor areas such as school grounds, we briefly reviewed the experience with this New Zealand law. Literature searches using PubMed, MEDLINE and Google Scholar were performed for the period 1 January 2004 to 17 June 2014. These were all focused on the New Zealand setting (preschools, schools and smoking). There was some evidence that the implementation of the law went relatively well. A survey published …