Tobacco and Nicotine Bans: Dr. Ardis on the 2030 Endgame Policies

Table of Contents

1. What Dr. Ardis Says
2. A Plain Primer: What a Tobacco “Endgame” Is
3. The Dates Side by Side
4. United States: FDA Proposals and Healthy People 2030
5. Canada: The Tobacco Strategy
6. New Zealand: Smokefree Aotearoa, the 2022 Law and Its 2024 Repeal
7. Australia: The National Tobacco Strategy and the 2024 Vaping Law
8. England and the United Kingdom: The Tobacco and Vapes Act
9. The Research on Very-Low-Nicotine Cigarettes
10. Smoking and COVID-19 in the Published Studies
11. Safety Notes
12. Dr. Ardis’s Own Work
13. Key Research Papers
14. Connections
15. Featured Videos

1. What Dr. Ardis Says

Dr. Ardis set this out in a 2025 podcast appearance (Culture Apothecary) and in his book Moving Beyond the COVID-19 Lies: Restoring Health and Hope for Humanity. His account runs as follows.

1. The timing. Within four weeks of his releasing Watch the Water, the documentary “telling the whole world that nicotine’s the antidote to all things COVID,” five countries “in unison came out on a Friday” with new national health agendas and new national press releases.
2. The announcements. He states that they announced they would permanently ban all nicotine agents commercially available to their citizens and all tobacco products.
3. The United States. He states that President Joe Biden said America would abolish all access to tobacco products and nicotine agents by the year 2030. He addresses Robert F. Kennedy Jr. directly: “RFK, make sure they don’t do this.”
4. The other four. He states that the same was said by Prime Minister Trudeau in Canada, by the Prime Minister of New Zealand, by the Prime Minister of Australia, and by the King in England.
5. England. He states that King Charles started this for England two years ago: anyone born after 1 January 2009 will never be able to buy a tobacco product or a nicotine product, and by 2030 there will be no access to tobacco products or nicotine agents.
6. The question he asks. Why, during the COVID-19 pandemic — “the biggest health crisis the whole world’s ever been confronted with” — did all these countries break for a week to announce that they would stop selling nicotine products?

His answer is set in the context of his wider nicotine argument. He says he will wear a nicotine patch for the rest of his life because he does not want to get sick, and that influenza viruses, coronaviruses, HIV, rabies and the COVID coronaviruses are all cured by nicotine. The ultimate goal of COVID, he says, was to get a vaccine. Every future pandemic that has been declared or named — he lists Rift Valley fever, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, Ebola, Marburg, bird flu and West Nile — has one thing in common: “They’re all viruses, and all of them you are going to be told, world, you need a vaccine for.”

They need more pandemics, they need more vaccines, and no one’s going to buy into the vaccine agenda in the future when they realize all the published articles for the last five years that smokers were the only one immune to COVID-19.

That is why, in his words, all the governments of the world were “forced in unison” to announce bans on all nicotine agents by 2030. The sections that follow set out what each of the five governments published, and when.

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2. A Plain Primer: What a Tobacco “Endgame” Is

“Tobacco endgame” is the term public-health researchers use for policies meant to bring smoking down to a very low level for good, rather than simply to keep reducing it. Kenneth Warner introduced a 2013 supplement of the journal Tobacco Control devoted to the idea; a 2016 review by Patricia McDaniel, Elizabeth Smith and Ruth Malone gathered the published proposals into one synthesis, and a 2022 scoping review by Coral Gartner’s group in Queensland (first author Puljević) mapped where the evidence on each measure was thin.

Most national endgame targets are written as a percentage: typically “less than 5%” of adults smoking (or using tobacco) by a stated year. The measures the papers and governments discuss fall into a few groups:

• A smokefree (or tobacco-free) generation — a rolling age of sale, so that people born on or after a fixed date can never legally be sold tobacco.
• Denicotinisation — a legal ceiling on the nicotine in cigarettes, low enough that they would no longer create or sustain addiction. This idea goes back to a 1994 proposal by Neal Benowitz and Jack Henningfield in the New England Journal of Medicine.
• Fewer places to buy — cutting the number of shops licensed to sell tobacco.
• Flavour bans — removing menthol and other characterising flavours.
• Rules on vapes — ranging from age limits and flavour limits to supply through pharmacies.

Two terms recur below. A proposed rule in the United States is a draft regulation published for public comment; it has no legal effect until a final rule follows. A King’s Speech in the United Kingdom is the government’s programme of planned laws for a new session of Parliament; the monarch reads it aloud, but the government writes it.

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3. The Dates Side by Side

The dates below are taken from each document itself (links in the sections that follow). Watch the Water was published on the video platform Rumble on 11 April 2022.

• 31 May 2018 — Canada launches Canada’s Tobacco Strategy on World No Tobacco Day, with a target of less than 5% tobacco use by 2035.
• December 2021 — New Zealand’s Ministry of Health publishes the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan.
• 11 April 2022 — Watch the Water is released.
• 28 April 2022 (a Thursday) — the US Food and Drug Administration announces proposed bans on menthol cigarettes and on flavoured cigars; both proposed rules are printed in the Federal Register on 4 May 2022.
• 9 June 2022 — the UK government publishes The Khan review: making smoking obsolete, an independent review it commissioned for England.
• 16 December 2022 — New Zealand’s Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022 receives Royal Assent.
• May 2023 — Australia releases its National Tobacco Strategy 2023–2030; on 2 May 2023 the federal government announces vaping reforms.
• 4 October 2023 — the UK government publishes Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation.
• 7 November 2023 — the King’s Speech announces legislation for a smokefree generation.
• 5 March 2024 — New Zealand’s repeal act receives Royal Assent, after passing under urgency on 27 February 2024.
• 27 June 2024 — Australia’s Vaping Reforms Act receives assent; it takes effect on 1 July 2024.
• 17 July 2024 — the King’s Speech of the new UK government announces the Tobacco and Vapes Bill.
• 16 January 2025 — the FDA’s proposed rule to limit nicotine in cigarettes and certain other combusted products is printed in the Federal Register (announced 15 January).
• 21 January 2025 — the menthol-cigarette rule, then under White House review, is recorded as withdrawn.
• 29 April 2026 — the UK Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 receives Royal Assent; its age-of-sale sections come into force on 1 January 2027.

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4. United States: FDA Proposals and Healthy People 2030

The 2022 menthol and flavoured-cigar proposals

On 28 April 2022 the FDA announced two proposed “tobacco product standards”: one to prohibit menthol as a characterising flavour in cigarettes, the other to prohibit all characterising flavours other than tobacco in cigars. Both were published in the Federal Register on 4 May 2022, and the comment period, later extended, drew more than 225,000 comments. Neither proposal limited nicotine itself. In April 2024 the Secretary of Health and Human Services said the menthol rule would take significantly more time; the federal regulatory review office records the menthol rule as withdrawn on 21 January 2025, and the cigar rule was withdrawn in the same month.

The January 2025 nicotine-limit proposal

On 15 January 2025 the FDA announced a proposed rule, printed on 16 January, that would set a maximum nicotine level of 0.7 milligrams per gram of tobacco in cigarettes, roll-your-own tobacco, pipe tobacco and most cigars — a level the agency describes as minimally addictive. The proposal does not cover e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, smokeless tobacco, waterpipe tobacco or premium cigars; nicotine patches and gum are regulated in the United States as medicines, not as tobacco products. Comments were accepted until 15 September 2025. It is a proposal: it would take effect only through a final rule, two years after that rule is published.

Healthy People 2030

Healthy People 2030 is the Department of Health and Human Services’ set of national health objectives for the decade to 2030. Its tobacco objectives are reduction targets, not prohibitions. Objective TU-02, “Reduce current cigarette smoking in adults,” sets a target of 6.1% from a 2019 baseline of 14.2% (10.1% in 2024, according to the objective’s page). Objective TU-01, “Reduce current tobacco use in adults,” sets a target of 17.4% from a 2019 baseline of 21.3%.

A specific statement by President Biden setting 2030 as the year by which access to tobacco and nicotine products would end is not identified here; the US federal documents with a 2030 horizon are the Healthy People 2030 objectives above.

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5. Canada: The Tobacco Strategy

Health Canada launched Canada’s Tobacco Strategy on 31 May 2018, World No Tobacco Day, during Justin Trudeau’s first term as Prime Minister. Its stated goal is “less than 5% tobacco use by 2035,” backed by $330 million over five years. The strategy combines help to quit, protection of young people and non-smokers from nicotine addiction, and work with Indigenous communities. It sets a prevalence target; it does not set an end date for the sale of tobacco or of nicotine products.

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6. New Zealand: Smokefree Aotearoa, the 2022 Law and Its 2024 Repeal

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health published the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan in December 2021. Its goal is that by 2025 daily smoking will be below 5% for all population groups. Among its six focus areas were three legal measures: allowing only low-nicotine smoked tobacco products to be sold, a smokefree generation (making it an offence to sell smoked tobacco to people born after a set date), and a large cut in the number of shops allowed to sell tobacco.

Those three measures became the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022, which received Royal Assent on 16 December 2022 under Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government. The smokefree generation applied to people born on or after 1 January 2009 and covered smoked tobacco products; vaping products were regulated separately.

After the 2023 election, the new coalition government repealed the three measures. The Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Act 2024 passed under urgency on 27 February 2024 and received Royal Assent on 5 March 2024. The smokefree generation, denicotinisation and retailer-reduction provisions never came into force.

Two modelling studies in Tobacco Control estimated what such measures might do in New Zealand. Frederieke van der Deen and colleagues (2018) modelled five strategies against a 2011 baseline and estimated smoking prevalence in 2025 under each: for Māori and non-Māori respectively, 11.2% and 5.6% under a tobacco-free generation, and 9.3% and 4.8% under a combination of tax rises, a tobacco-free generation and fewer outlets. Driss Ait Ouakrim and colleagues (2024) modelled the Action Plan’s package and estimated that denicotinisation alone delivered 97% of its projected health gains, the retail measure 19% and the tobacco-free generation 12%. These are forecasts from models, not observed outcomes.

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7. Australia: The National Tobacco Strategy and the 2024 Vaping Law

National Tobacco Strategy 2023–2030

The federal government released the National Tobacco Strategy 2023–2030 in May 2023. Its targets are national daily smoking among adults of less than 10% by 2025 and 5% or less by 2030, and daily smoking among First Nations people aged 15 and over of 27% or less by 2030. Like Canada’s, it sets prevalence targets rather than a ban on sale.

The 2024 vaping reforms

Nicotine vapes had already required a prescription in Australia since 2021; a 2024 paper by Michelle Scollo and colleagues in Public Health Research & Practice notes that retail sale of nicotine vapes by tobacconists and convenience stores had never been lawful there, and describes the May 2023 reforms as a move to enforce that prescription model. The Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Act 2024 received assent on 27 June 2024 and took effect on 1 July 2024. From that date vapes could be sold only through pharmacies as therapeutic goods, non-pharmacy retailers could not sell any vape, and flavours were limited to mint, menthol and tobacco. From 1 October 2024 pharmacists may supply vapes of 20 mg/mL nicotine or less to adults aged 18 and over without a prescription, after a consultation; higher strengths, and anyone under 18, still need a prescription where state or territory law allows.

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8. England and the United Kingdom: The Tobacco and Vapes Act

The UK’s route ran through several documents. In June 2022 the government published The Khan review: making smoking obsolete, an independent review for England that recommended raising the age of sale year by year. On 4 October 2023 the government published Stopping the start: our new plan to create a smokefree generation. On 7 November 2023, in the first King’s Speech in over 70 years, King Charles III read the government’s programme:

My Government will introduce legislation to create a smokefree generation by restricting the sale of tobacco so that children currently aged fourteen or younger can never be sold cigarettes, and restricting the sale and marketing of e-cigarettes to children.

A first Tobacco and Vapes Bill was introduced in 2024 and fell when Parliament was dissolved for the July 2024 general election. The new government’s King’s Speech of 17 July 2024 announced it again: “A Bill will be introduced to progressively increase the age at which people can buy cigarettes and impose limits on the sale and marketing of vapes.”

The Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026. Section 1 makes it an offence “to sell any of the following to a person born on or after 1 January 2009 — (a) a tobacco product; (b) a herbal smoking product; (c) cigarette papers.” The age-of-sale sections come into force on 1 January 2027. The generational offence names tobacco, herbal smoking products and cigarette papers; vapes and other nicotine products are covered by the Act’s separate provisions on sale, advertising, packaging and display.

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9. The Research on Very-Low-Nicotine Cigarettes

The FDA’s 2025 proposal and New Zealand’s 2022 law both rested on denicotinisation, and two large US trials are the studies most often cited for it.

• Donny and colleagues, 2015 (New England Journal of Medicine). 840 adults who smoked at least five cigarettes a day and did not plan to quit were randomly assigned, at 10 US sites, to smoke for six weeks either their usual brand or research cigarettes ranging from 15.8 mg of nicotine per gram of tobacco (typical of commercial cigarettes) down to 0.4 mg per gram. In week 6, people on the 2.4, 1.3 and 0.4 mg cigarettes smoked about 15 to 16.5 cigarettes a day, against about 21 to 22 on the usual brand or the 15.8 mg cigarette. The lower-nicotine cigarettes also reduced nicotine exposure and dependence scores, without a significant rise in exhaled carbon monoxide or puff volume.
• Hatsukami and colleagues, 2018 (JAMA). 1,250 daily smokers were randomised for 20 weeks to an immediate drop to 0.4 mg per gram, a gradual step-down from 15.5 to 0.4 mg over five monthly changes, or usual-nicotine cigarettes. The immediate group had lower levels of three markers of smoke exposure (breath carbon monoxide, an acrolein breakdown product and a marker of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) than both other groups; the gradual group did not differ from the usual-nicotine group.

A separate line of research traces the history of age-of-sale laws themselves. Dorie Apollonio and Stanton Glantz (2016, American Journal of Public Health) documented minimum ages of legal access to tobacco in the United States from 1863 to 2015.

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10. Smoking and COVID-19 in the Published Studies

Dr. Ardis refers to “all the published articles for the last five years” on smokers and COVID-19. Two of the most cited are described here as they read.

• Farsalinos, Barbouni and Niaura, 2020 (Internal and Emergency Medicine). A systematic review of 13 Chinese studies covering 5,960 hospitalised COVID-19 patients. The pooled share of current smokers was 6.5%, about a quarter of the 26.6% smoking rate in China’s general population. The authors wrote that, while advice to quit smoking remains valid, these findings together with nicotine’s known effects on the immune system suggested pharmaceutical nicotine should be considered as a potential treatment option in COVID-19.
• Simons, Shahab, Brown and Perski, 2021 (Addiction). A “living” review (version 7, searches to 25 August 2020) of 233 studies, 32 of them in the main analyses. Recorded smoking among people with COVID-19 was generally lower than national rates, and current smokers had a lower risk of testing positive than never smokers (relative risk 0.74). Former smokers had a higher risk of hospitalisation, severe disease and death than never smokers. The authors wrote that it was uncertain whether these associations were causal.

Other pages in this wing set out the nicotine-and-COVID research in more depth, including the 2023 Leitzke case reports of nicotine patches in long COVID.

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11. Safety Notes

• Children and pets: nicotine is poisonous to small bodies. A used patch still holds a large share of its nicotine. Keep new and used patches, gum and lozenges out of reach of children and pets; fold used patches sticky-side together before discarding. If a child or pet chews or swallows one, call Poison Control (1-800-222-1222 in the United States) or a vet at once.
• No child doses are given on this site. Any use of nicotine in a child is a decision for a clinician who knows that child.
• Who should not use nicotine: pregnancy and breastfeeding, unstable heart disease or a recent heart attack, recent stroke, serious heart-rhythm problems, and uncontrolled high blood pressure. Nausea, dizziness, a racing heart and vivid dreams are signs of too much.
• The full list of contraindications is on the Nicotine Patch Protocol page.

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12. Dr. Ardis’s Own Work

• Moving Beyond the COVID-19 Lies: Restoring Health and Hope for Humanity — the site’s page on his book.
• Dr. Bryan Ardis Hub — the wing’s main page, with his nicotine hypothesis and every page in the wing.

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Key Research Papers

1. Warner KE (2013). An endgame for tobacco? Tob Control. — PubMed PMID: 23591502
2. McDaniel PA, Smith EA, Malone RE (2016). The tobacco endgame: a qualitative review and synthesis. Tob Control. — PubMed PMID: 26320149
3. Puljević C, Morphett K, Hefler M, Edwards R, Walker N, Thomas DP, et al. (2022). Closing the gaps in tobacco endgame evidence: a scoping review. Tob Control. — PubMed PMID: 35241614
4. Benowitz NL, Henningfield JE (1994). Establishing a nicotine threshold for addiction. The implications for tobacco regulation. N Engl J Med. — PubMed PMID: 7818638
5. Donny EC, Denlinger RL, Tidey JW, Koopmeiners JS, Benowitz NL, Vandrey RG, et al. (2015). Randomized Trial of Reduced-Nicotine Standards for Cigarettes. N Engl J Med. — PubMed PMID: 26422724
6. Hatsukami DK, Luo X, Jensen JA, al’Absi M, Allen SS, Carmella SG, et al. (2018). Effect of Immediate vs Gradual Reduction in Nicotine Content of Cigarettes on Biomarkers of Smoke Exposure: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. — PubMed PMID: 30193275
7. van der Deen FS, Wilson N, Cleghorn CL, Kvizhinadze G, Cobiac LJ, Nghiem N, et al. (2018). Impact of five tobacco endgame strategies on future smoking prevalence, population health and health system costs: two modelling studies to inform the tobacco endgame. Tob Control. — PubMed PMID: 28647728
8. Ait Ouakrim D, Wilson T, Waa A, Maddox R, Andrabi H, Mishra SR, et al. (2024). Tobacco endgame intervention impacts on health gains and Māori:non-Māori health inequity: a simulation study of the Aotearoa/New Zealand Tobacco Action Plan. Tob Control. — PubMed PMID: 36627213
9. Scollo M, Grace C, Buchanan T, Dessaix A (2024). A prescription model for vapes: the way we ‘do’ medicines policy in Australia. Public Health Res Pract. — PubMed PMID: 38763779
10. Apollonio DE, Glantz SA (2016). Minimum Ages of Legal Access for Tobacco in the United States From 1863 to 2015. Am J Public Health. — PubMed PMID: 27196658
11. Farsalinos K, Barbouni A, Niaura R (2020). Systematic review of the prevalence of current smoking among hospitalized COVID-19 patients in China: could nicotine be a therapeutic option? Intern Emerg Med. — PubMed PMID: 32385628
12. Simons D, Shahab L, Brown J, Perski O (2021). The association of smoking status with SARS-CoV-2 infection, hospitalization and mortality from COVID-19: a living rapid evidence review with Bayesian meta-analyses (version 7). Addiction. — PubMed PMID: 33007104

PubMed Topic Searches

1. PubMed: Tobacco endgame
2. PubMed: Tobacco-free generation
3. PubMed: Very-low-nicotine-content cigarettes

External Authoritative Resources

• Federal Register: Tobacco Product Standard for Menthol in Cigarettes (proposed rule, 4 May 2022)
• Federal Register: Tobacco Product Standard for Characterizing Flavors in Cigars (proposed rule, 4 May 2022)
• Reginfo.gov: Menthol in Cigarettes rule — concluded action “Withdrawn,” 21 January 2025
• Federal Register: Tobacco Product Standard for Nicotine Yield of Cigarettes and Certain Other Combusted Tobacco Products (proposed rule, 16 January 2025)
• Healthy People 2030: Tobacco Use objectives (US Department of Health and Human Services)
• Health Canada: Canada’s Tobacco Strategy
• New Zealand Ministry of Health: Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan (December 2021)
• New Zealand Legislation: Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022
• New Zealand Legislation: Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Act 2024
• Australian Government Department of Health: National Tobacco Strategy 2023–2030
• Federal Register of Legislation (Australia): Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Act 2024
• GOV.UK: The Khan review — making smoking obsolete (9 June 2022)
• GOV.UK: Stopping the start — our new plan to create a smokefree generation (4 October 2023)
• GOV.UK: The King’s Speech 2023 (7 November 2023)
• GOV.UK: The King’s Speech 2024 (17 July 2024)
• legislation.gov.uk: Tobacco and Vapes Act 2026 (Royal Assent 29 April 2026)

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Connections

• Dr. Bryan Ardis Hub — the wing’s main page: his nicotine hypothesis and snake-venom theory
• Tobacco, Indigenous Medicine and the Suppression of Therapeutic Nicotine — the longer history behind his argument
• The Nicotine Hypothesis — nicotine apart from smoke
• The Snake Venom Hypothesis — the argument of Watch the Water
• Nicotine Patches for Long COVID: The Leitzke Cases — the case reports he cites
• Pyrazines and Nicotine Addiction — the tobacco additives he says cause addiction
• Moving Beyond the COVID-19 Lies — his 2024 book
• Nicotine Patch Protocol — dosing, placement and the full safety list
• The Nicotine Patch: Skin to Bloodstream to Receptor (Animation) — how a patch delivers nicotine
• COPD — the lung disease most closely tied to smoking
• Thromboangiitis Obliterans (Buerger’s Disease) — a blood-vessel disease almost confined to tobacco users
• Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers — Ebola, Marburg, Crimean-Congo and Rift Valley fever, on his list of named viruses

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