Petition updateBAN VAPE SHOPS. Use plain packaging with health warnings and pharmacy outlet onlyTo Luxon : Would you want your child to be addicted and not know the risks or how to quit?
Mary MacGibbonNew Zealand
Feb 8, 2024

Letter sent yesterday - 

" I hate to be cynical but the government would lose the 15% from each deal of any vaper who quits, child or adult.


Is this why phones are being addressed but not vapes, or why both Labour and this Coalition under National 
1. have not required government vape or nicotine quitting programmes to be established, 
2. have not provided proper information online and elsewhere about risks of vaping as there are in the US or in Australia, and
3. have allowed every retailer to get a licence to display and sell vapes, and vapes to be easily accessible online, 
etc.


Vapes were to be a tool to stop smoking. This did not give the government licence to deal them like candy, in specialty shops which look like they sell chocolate or other desirable items, alluringly and colourfully displayed with no health warnings, no quitting programmes etc.  There already was a massive campaign to encourage vaping. If you go to the Dept of Public Health publicity site and search for quitting, a sexy alluring vaping picture pops up on the second item. See 2019 item * below. We do not need any more displays. Vapes can still be available but be much less visible, like tobacco cigarettes. These SVR shops near schools are currently permitted to remain there of course and the weak referendum allowed this. 
Clearly both products should have extremely controlled licencing, as they are both toxic.


The 'advisory' Dept of Health at the Uni of Otago is not autonomous, it is part of the Ministry of Health. 
Regardless of why, the Dept. is not clearly** advocating for items 1-3 above to be addressed, let alone more. It says we must be careful about children vaping (and is in recent material mentioning more but not 'loudly'. This is added after letter sent) but it appears to be 'all talk'.


 'Blind Freddy' can see if we want children to be safe we immediately address these items, along with the associated plain packaging with health warnings. Anything less is a criminal exploitation of the public for money.


Would you want your child to be addicted to an aerosol product which the American Cancer Council advises is too risky even as a means of switching from tobacco, and your child to think it is basically safe, and when they are addicted to have no programmes to help them to quit, just colourful vape promoting displays and shops?


Vapes should be out of public view, and a campaign undertaken about vaping risks, so the public are informed. Right now they only know about tobacco. The aerosol from vape liquid should not be described as something you should really be pretty unconcerned about. State the inflammation-causing propylene glycol and all the other constituents in harmful concentrations in vape aerosols.


Help people get off nicotine delivery via the lungs, and help them quit nicotine, as in the programmes described by Mayo clinic and others, which describe the process, what to expect, eg if going cold turkey, how the family can help.


Is this government overtly corrupt?
The proof will be in the pudding.


Yours sincerely


Mary MacGibbon (PhD)

 

 

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