Paediatrician Dr Colette Muir said the Paediatric Society of New Zealand was “extremely worried” by the level of youth vaping in New Zealand.
“While the health policy intention regarding vaping was to reduce smoking it is now clear that vaping is causing significant harm to Aotearoa’s tamariki and rangitahi,” Muir said.
“More needs to be done to prevent youth who do not smoke taking up vaping in the first place.”
Muir said there needs to be a balance between supporting those quitting smoking cigarettes and protecting youth from taking up vaping.
Muir is particularly worried about the impacts nicotine withdrawal has on learning and behaviour.
She claimed recent studies showed teens are enticed by the flavours, and pick up vaping because of curiosity or to follow their peers.
“We are concerned that an alarming number of high school students are trying or taking up vaping because their friends do it and they’ve heard it’s safe and are curious,” Muir said.
“While the Vaping Amendment Act which came into force in November 2022, aims to make e-cigarettes less appealing and available to teens, we feel more needs to be done to prevent youth taking up e-cigarettes, particularly e-cigarettes that contain nicotine.”
Earlier this month, Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said the Government were not actively looking to follow Australia’s lead in banning all vaping products for recreational use, stating they need to remain “readily available” as regulations on tobacco ramp up.
Since 2021, nicotine vapes can only be sold in Australia with a prescription - but a black market for the products is thriving, and non-nicotine vapes sold at convenience stores are often found to contain the highly addictive substance.
It was recently announced the Australian government would tighten restrictions, ban the importation of non-prescription vapes and close down the sale of vapes in retail settings.
Now, certain flavours colours and other ingredients in vapes will be banned, and they will only be sold in pharmacies and in “pharmaceutical-like” packaging.
Verrall said vaping was an important tool to support people to quit smoking, particularly for the newly smoke-free, but the balance needed to be right in making sure young people did not take it up.
“We haven’t got that balance right at the moment.”
Verrall said they had been consulting on a range of proposals including flavours, branding, disposable vapes and proximity of sales to schools.
National’s Christopher Luxon said he was open to “all things”, including a ban.
“I really think we’ve got our vape settings wrong here in New Zealand, I would really like us to take a step back and really look at them closely.
“It’s impacting our young people. Originally, they were introduced so that it actually could help people come off smoking, but it’s actually created a whole class and a new sector of addiction for people.”
