How smoking ended NZ First minister Casey Costello’s father’s life

When minister Casey Costello contemplates how she will achieve Smokefree 2025 , she recalls her father. John Costello, who died in 2018, had worked as a journalist for most of his life, fashioning a career in newsrooms clouded in cigarette smoke and contributing to a smoking habit maintained for more than 50 years. Costello described her father as a “stubborn” smoker and she believed it was a mindset she would need to address as she led the Government’s smoking reform and progress towards the long-held goal to reduce the number of Kiwis smoking to 5% of the population by the end of 2025.

“Dad was one of these ones [who said], ‘I’m not going to be told what to do’,” Costello told the Herald . “It’s shifting that mentality, that it’s actually your quality of life. It’s those sorts of things that shifted Dad’s mentality.



”.