Dear Signers
I strongly suggest you take 5 minutes to write a clear submission to the Government Select Committee regarding the proposed amendment about vaping. Submissions close soon, on Friday 27 September.
A submission can be one or many sentences.
Note – the term ‘Smokefree’ is always used by the government to refer only to tobacco, and vaping is always made out to be quite safe, just a bit of vapour with nicotine, not containing the propylene glycol and other substances known to be hazardous in the concentrations entering the vapers lungs.
The government always argues that vaping stops cigarette smoking and that justifies the extraordinary level of marketing and availability of vape products. Both are of course highly hazardous to health, but as vaping effects are not as researched as those of smoking, saying that vaping is as bad as smoking may be rejected even though it was predicted to be dangerous, and increasing research and findings are confirming it is a great risk, and may be as damaging long term as tobacco. The material in this petition and in its updates provides the robust research and findings regarding risks, serious concerns of clinicians etc.
I suggest main points in a submission might be one or more of the following:
The W.H.O. strongly recommends tight regulation or banning of vapes. N.Z. is one of the few outlier countries which is not following this. NZ is second in the OECD in vape use per person, over 20% of our 15 to 24 year olds vape regularly, and yet we liberally market the product with considerable government support. This includes an arguably criminal understatement of risk. Government advice in other countries, including the U.S. and Australia, includes clear easy-to-access statements of primary risk factors, not just the nicotine addiction as in NZ govt. messaging.
Unlike NZ they also have clear well advertised means of support for quitting vaping and nicotine addiction.
NZ until very recently had no support for quitting vaping, with Quitline just supporting quitting tobacco and strongly advising use of vaping to do so, with no mention of quitting nicotine addiction. The government is still not providing decent support for vaping and nicotine addiction.
Addressing nicotine addiction would deprive the government of billions of dollars and the tobacco-vape-HTP corporations, primarily offshore, of even more. This money is currently being taken from the large number who are both exploited financially for their addiction and placed at high risk for serious irreversible lung disease, cancers and other serious conditions.
It is shocking.
Vapes are still not approved by Medsafe, and legally, as a measure to assist in quitting tobacco smoking, are only permitted to be available on prescription. They certainly shouldn’t be sold as candy for over 18s as they are here in shops and online.
Vapes and tobacco cigarettes should be out of sight, with a large public media campaign advising NZ of what is in vapes, what are the primary risks, how to overcome vape and nicotine addiction, and how to look after your lungs.
HTPs are a lot like vapes but with other substances found in cigarette smoke and contributed to by the means of heating and delivery of the aerosol components to the lungs, so a terrible idea. They and SNUs, banned in most countries are toxic and addictive, and a dangerous way to cater to a nicotine addiction.
Counselling, cold turkey, patches, gum are safer, and cold turkey with appropriate social support the most successful. See Mayo clinic refs. After only 3 days even tobacco smokers report feeling that their lungs seem to function better and the nicotine cravings are much reduced.
For refs to the science of vape risks and emerging evidence you can refer to the original petition material, such as that from lung.org which is reflected in the advice from more responsible governments, major clinical groups, Mayo Clinic et al, and also to the easily accessible petition updates. The UK studies on genetic changes and on lung function measurements and cardiovascular changes describing the same effects manifesting in vapers as in tobacco smokers are useful. That the life insurance companies, eg in Australia, increase in their costs to the insured due to being a vaper is the same as that for tobacco smokers is another robust indicator of the considerable hazards of vaping.
We want a ‘Smokefree and Vapefree New Zealand’ and I suggest the title to the amendment be changed accordingly.