An electronic device for vaping, a practice which has risen in popularity as cigarette smoking has dropped away. Photo / Nijat Nasibli, Getty Images
An electronic device for vaping, a practice which has risen in popularity as cigarette smoking has dropped away. Photo / Nijat Nasibli, Getty Images
OPINION
The current mess with banks refusing credit after laws to prevent loan sharking shows that because two things correlate, one doesn't necessarily cause the other. That doesn't stop preconceptions and gut feelings; even experts put two and two together to arrive at five. Correlation isn't causation.
In recentweeks, vaping and smoking has been prominent in the Herald.
In the blue corner is Professor Robert Beaglehole who, with ASH and Auckland University, have featured vaping as one of the best tools we have to stop smoking. In the red corner are negative columns representing the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation's view.
With smoking rates falling as vaping takes off, why are some going hell for leather to take it out? Late last year, the Ministry of Health said that 9.4 per cent of Kiwis smoke daily after the biggest year-on-year fall ever. This corresponded with the biggest rise in daily vaping to 6.2 per cent. Consumers are voting with their own wallets for better health.
So why attack "Vape to Quit Strong" when it's working? Not long ago, we're talking 2013-2014, over half of 15-34 year-olds used to smoke daily. After six years of eyewatering excise tax hikes, plain packaging and TV campaigns, this fell by 18 per cent to a third. Not what the experts expected because correlation is not causation.
You need something more and the confounder is vaping. Something the Ministry of Health's easy to understand 2020/2021 New Zealand Health Survey highlights big time.
In the first year since vaping was regulated, the Ministry of Health found that smoking among 15-34-year-olds collapsed to 21.1 per cent - that's a 12 per cent drop in just one year. This also saw the biggest decline in Maori smokers while Asian Kiwis became the first smokefree ethnicity.
Among youth, the subject of the Herald's recent focus, what isn't reported nearly enough is that just 1.1 per cent of 15-17-year-olds smoke daily and 8.1 per cent of those aged 18-24. At this rate there's no need for the Smokefree Generations Policy. They're on track well before 2025. This is the opposite of the clickbait with youth vaping. The Ministry of Health may put 15-17-year-old daily vapers at 5.8 per cent but 2 per cent quit smoking in the same year. Here, the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation strains credibility by claiming youth vaping is almost four times higher. If one in five young vaped daily I think we'd all notice. As Professor Beaglehole said in the Herald recently, 20 years ago 15 per cent of 15-17-year-olds used to smoke daily.
Given it's hard to have a cup of tea while chewing nicotine gum, vaping fits with what smokers know. So is vaping "safe"? I cannot say that. Is vaping less harmful than smoking? You bet. Public Health England maintains vaping is 95 per cent less harmful than lighting up. Vaping creates a flavoured aerosol whereas a cigarette is like sticking your head over a chimney. The most harmful chemicals come when anything burns.
Not content with attacking our best smokefree tool, the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation now wants to ban vape sales within a kilometre of every school. You are talking a vast land area covering 78.5 hectares. That's like putting the Auckland Domain around each and every school in New Zealand. That's not just unreasonable, it's barking mad.
I have to call out the racism here. Most dairy owners are ethnic but are being portrayed like a pantomime villain. If a dairy owner, or anyone, knowingly sells to underage people they deserve to have the book thrown at them because 18+ is the law. As correlation is not causation, could kids be getting vapes off older siblings and friends? Could they be "borrowing" a vape from home? Is there a black market, as with cigarettes? Dairies are daily crime victims and vape stores are increasingly ram raided. Much more attention must be applied to retail crime.
Sunny Kaushal. Photo / Jason Oxenham, File
Dairies want to be part of the smokefree solution, because it is an alternative for when cigarette sales eventually end. This needs three policy changes. First, re-enable the sale of flavours in dairies and second, allow us to sell Scandinavian style oral nicotine pouches that's achieved miracles up in Europe. Vaping shows that greater consumer choice will achieve Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 faster and more cheaply than other initiatives. Third, we should also be able to talk freely about vaping with customers who come in to buy cigarettes. Three things under law we cannot do.
And while it shouldn't happen, children will do their own thing and experiment. What used to be "smoking behind the bike sheds" back in the day, is now vaping behind the bike sheds.
• Sunny Kaushal is the chair of the Dairy and Business Owners Group.
