PHCC (Public Health Communication Centre) has just published a new piece on nicotine pouches regarding young people and their perceptions of them. (see link below)
These pouches, eg Zyn by Philip Morris, present serious health hazards from nicotine and their other constituents, including formaldehyde and other carcinogens, but other than nicotine the constituents are not mentioned in this article. This is concerning for a public health publication, informing the public about a new highly addictive product already used by young adults in NZ and about to be legalised here.
Final decisions about these pouches will of course be made partly by Associate Minister for Health, Casey Costello, considered an advocate for the tobacco and vape industry eg see the reversal on disposable vapes ban legislation, on the basis of battery risk not being adequately proven, and following vape industry complaint, the health benefits of the ban apparently not a consideration in reversing it.
But the PHCC and the Dept of Public Health have a voice, and could easily exert influence that she and her colleagues cannot ignore with respect to health, and long term economic, issues here.
See clinical opinion about nicotine pouches: eg American Lung Association https://www.lung.org/blog/zyn-nicotine-addiction
Even Canada, an outlier like the UK and NZ in poor vape regulation, has restricted these to pharmacy-only availability and clearly cites on their simple info sheet concerns about formaldehyde etc:
https://www.pharmacists.ca/cpha-ca/assets/File/smoking-cessation/Nicotine-Pouches-A-Guide-for-Pharmacists_EN.pdf
The PHCC piece - https://www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/nicotine-pouches-and-young-people-evidence-aotearoa-new-zealand
The piece does appear to be evidence of catering to tobacco/vape industry bidding, supported by the govt which clearly makes a lot of money keeping NZ hooked, and keeping their lobby groups on side with associated benefits. The PHCC appears to comment, but in fact understates risk et al.
The lack of robust recommendation from PHCC for putting health risks on vape packaging and in public media, not just the reference to nicotine, its lack of serious challenge to the still extraordinarily easy accessibility of vapes including online, and inadequate request and support for decent campaigns for nicotine addiction, is evidence of supporting the industry at the expense of health and is the opposite of what the PHCC role should be.
Why this occurs raises obvious disturbing questions.
That C Costello is an Assoc Min for Health is of course most disturbing. W Peters appears to be 'up to his eye balls' re evident complicity. Dr Verrall has clearly and unnecessarily helped SVRs establish close to schools, massively promoted vaping while in fact denying serious health risk etc
There will be some political pressures on PHCC writers in this space, but there is indication of other factors.
The Coalition appears to manifest a general industry/offshore/voter base wealth profits over public interest in many of their strategies, and the tobacco/vapes/nicotine pouch approach appears in large part to be a manifestation of this
Note that the PHCC has published some useful material eg on the Regulatory Standards Bill with Sir Geoffrey Palmer, and about W Peters and the vape industry especially, although the info re Mr Peters was already released so it had to.
But re vapes et al it generally it is still overall acting as a de facto industry supporter, as detailed above.
(It is of course recognised that some nicotine products may be useful in reducing habits such as tobacco smoking but, regarding those other than patches or gum, and as often stated in the updates and in part above, with their easy availability, the lack of legal requirement for clear statement of health risk on packaging etc in addition to that of nicotine addiction, and no widespread dynamic effective support for unhooking from nicotine, the government is just criminally helping the respective industries to exploit the public, while also profiting from the addiction and exposure to serious health risks. )
Photo of nicotine pouches. Wikipedia