Vaping has become an epidemic among young people in Horowhenua. Photo / 123rf
A vaping mogul wants Horowhenua ratepayers to help fund programmes to help stem a youth vaping epidemic and put tighter restrictions on where vapes can be sold.
Jason Larsen, who has a financial interest in the biggest stand-alone vape outlets in Levin and Foxton, is lobbying for the industry to be regulated to restrict where vape products can be bought.
There are now 31 locations in Levin alone where vape products can be bought, some within a stone’s throw of a school. Larsen told Horowhenua district councillors at a recent meeting the status quo was not working.
“We’ve seen an absolute outburst of ‘shop in shop’ where the same person that sells you lollies can walk into the shop next door and sell you a vape ... we see that right throughout Levin,” he told the meeting.
“Quite often the vape shop itself is unattended. We see that right throughout Levin at the moment ... very few fulltime staff in these shops. They are often crossed between general retail, normally in the form of a dairy, and then their vape shop.”
There are two types of licensed vape retailers: Special Vape Retailers (SVR) and Approved Vape Retailers (AVP). An SVR, like Larsen’s new Publos store in Levin, must be approved by the Vaping Regulatory Authority (VRA).
In Levin alone, an estimated 80 per cent of secondary school students have tried vaping and more than half are addicted to vape products.
There have been reports of students having trouble accessing school toilets because they were being used as vape dens.
Vaping has quickly become huge business, too, estimated to be worth as much as $10 million to the local economy annually. One of the largest vape manufacturing plants in New Zealand, Lion Labs, has its head office in Levin and employs 13 staff.
Larsen has also suggested to Te Whatu Ora that vape licences be introduced, which would mean each device could be traced back to the purchaser through a licence number, similar to firearms.
Fines could be imposed on anyone found supplying vapes to minors, he said at the meeting, which was live-streamed on Horowhenua District Council’s website.
“We can track the device to find out where it was sold and who it was sold to, and find out from there how the minor came actually to be in possession of that vape,” Larsen said.
“We think we should support local iwi, funded by council, to run improved parenting programmes.”
Youth were accessing vapes much the same way they accessed alcohol or cannabis ― from older friends or family members.
“I invite every single one of you to come and sit in my shop ― sit there for two or three hours ― and see the direct correlation between adults coming in and purchasing and youth receiving those vapes,” he said at the meeting.
Councillor Piri-Hira Tukapua said most young people had never tried cigarette smoking but had taken to vaping directly. She said 80 per cent of early secondary entrants had tried vaping and 60 per cent had become dependent on nicotine.
“That’s mainly because they see cigarettes as bad for you and vapes as fairly safe, although we are yet to learn what the real harms are,” she said at the meeting.
Studies had shown 56,000 people in New Zealand had stopped smoking in the past year, yet an estimated 119,000 people aged 15-24 were now addicted to vaping.
Tukapua dealt with youth organisations through her role at the council and said youth identified vaping as a key concern. Young people told her if they could not get vapes themselves, they simply got someone else to acquire them.
Vaping in school toilets meant those areas were often inaccessible and some students didn’t feel safe using the toilets. Some student users were being threatened with violence to surrender their vapes and felt scared, she said.
More-serious users had needed one-on-one counselling. Some students weren’t able to concentrate in class because “they’re thinking, ‘Oh, I just want to go outside and vape’,” she said.
“They are recognising in themselves that they are getting a bit angry.”
Larsen said he had approached the board of a local secondary school with a proposal to install cameras at his stores with facial recognition technology and had offered to contribute to the cost of counselling for addicted students.
He said the school refused his proposal.
“The reality is you have to work with people like us in order to create a solution that is actually going to work.”
Larsen claimed vaping was less harmful than the vehicle fumes anyone walking down Oxford St would be exposed to. He also claimed vaping was “95 per cent” less harmful than cigarette smoking.
He dismissed concerns from the Cancer Society and iwi about vape harm, claiming the science was conclusive.
“We don’t have to wait 10 years. Toxicology reports can show us far earlier what the impacts of certain things are.”
Larsen said there was a direct correlation between a reduction in smoking and an increase in vape use, although he admitted it was a double-edged sword.
“On one hand we don’t want to see youth vaping, but on the other hand we want to see more adult smokers transitioning to vapes ... youth are vaping but adult smokers need a way to cease smoking.”
He said he was an example of someone who was able to quit smoking by taking up vaping.
“I myself was a pack a day and haven’t had a smoke for four years.”
But, aside from the merits of vaping as a smoking cessation tool, the reality was a generation of New Zealanders was fast becoming addicted to new nicotine products on the market.
HDC had received an email from Vape-free Kids Group asking to support petitions to ban the sale of vape products from non-specialist stores such as dairies and to provide advocacy to central government in several areas, mainly in the regulatory management of vape product sales.
The email said “thousands of our tamariki and rangatahi are being enticed into vaping and now struggle with nicotine addiction”.
Deputy Mayor David Allan said the council had shown leadership in reducing the effects of smoking in the past and had updated its Smokefree and Vapefree Environment Policy last year to include vaping. That policy was changed in 2021 to include vaping.
But in reality, the policy was toothless and widely ignored.
The policy was supposed to prohibit vaping at all outdoor facilities, including stadiums, sports grounds, outdoor swimming pools, health centres, playgrounds and skateparks, including those not within a park or reserve, all sports fields including associated spectator areas, all parks, reserves and cemeteries, all public outdoor areas associated with HDC service centres, libraries, community facilities, museums, leisure centres and recreation centres, and all transport areas including bus stations, taxi ranks, train stations and schools.
The policy intended that it would be “self-policing”, supported by persuasion rather than punitive enforcement.
“Council may take additional action in the case of a persistent issue,” the policy says.
“The policy intends to educate the public and send a positive message to the Horowhenua community that our people’s health and the environment should be protected from the effects of smoking and vaping. The public will be encouraged through appropriate signage and publicity to maintain a clean, healthy environment in areas deemed smokefree and vapefree.”
A recording of the Horowhenua District Council meeting on August 30 can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRlcb-BnUac
