Thanks to vapes, NZ now has more daily nicotine users than it did five years ago, writes Fred Christensen. (Photo: RNZ)
The big selling point of vapes — that they’re a smoking cessation tool — has failed to live up to its promise. Instead, vapes are generating huge profit for companies and new nicotine addiction in communities, writes Fred Christensen in Wairoa.
When cigarettes became too expensive, Hemi, 26, like many others, shifted to vaping. Part of his enjoyment was simply socialising with others who puffed. But now, having quit a couple of years after moving back to Wairoa, Hemi looks around his hometown in disbelief.
He thought he’d left vaping behind, but instead, vaping seems to be everywhere.
“Every third or fourth person I know vapes. Kids who would never consider smoking — they’re now addicted to nicotine,” he says.
Hemi is what Wairoa needs — someone who’s come home and is optimistic about our town and his place here. But he’s at a loss to explain where the vapes are coming from, and he feels something fundamental has changed. “It’s just everywhere,” he says flatly.
The kids aren’t smoking. Why aren’t we celebrating?
In 2017, the government legalised e-cigarettes and promoted them as a tool to help smokers quit. And vaping did initially contribute to an impressive decline in smoking rates. But over time, vaping stopped being a means to an end. It became the end itself.
A few years later, vaping has become so widespread that New Zealand now has more daily nicotine users than it did five years ago. In fact, 86,000 more people are regularly consuming nicotine than in 2018. And the number continues to rise. Smoking rates, meanwhile, have largely plateaued.
In places like Wairoa, vaping is embedded in everyday life. Tom, a hardworking family man with deep roots in the community, reflects on his decade-long smoking habit and the shift to vaping. “It’s not just me. Everyone in my family vapes. It’s just a thing we do.” But he knows it’s taken a toll. “I know that I’m running short on breath. I can feel it when my mates and I do a challenge, like walking up a maunga with backpacks. I’m the last one in the group to make it to the top.”
Knowledge alone isn’t always enough to make people change. As Hemi experienced, quitting vapes required far more than just knowing the risks.
“Man, both my mind and body didn’t feel right. It’s crazy, but sometimes I almost felt sick to my stomach until I had the next vape,” he says. “One day, I looked around and asked myself why I was vaping. From the moment I got up until I went to bed, I was vaping. It ruled my life.”
It took Hemi three weeks, but he finally shook it off.
Where are we now?
The claim that shifting from cigarettes to vaping is a healthier option has run out of gas. Statistics from the Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) show that 8 percent of our population still smokes and may never quit, while the number of new vape users is growing. Instead of reaching the 5 percent Smokefree 2025 goal, we’ve created a new generation of nicotine addicts.
The numbers from PHCC are truly sobering. Twenty percent of our rangatahi aged 15 to 17 vape even though it’s illegal at that age. That rises to almost one-third of those from 18 to 24. Māori vape at three times the rate of Pākehā, and deprived areas like Wairoa have more than three times the rate of vapers compared to our wealthiest areas.
“In Wairoa, it’s become completely acceptable among our rangatahi. I suppose that a lot of us thought it wasn’t so bad simply because it wasn’t smoking,” Hemi says. “Some now vape indoors because it doesn’t give off smoke. Now, whole families vape as if it’s harmless.”
Coastline vape shop in Wairoa. (Image supplied)
Is vaping unhealthy?
We know smoking kills. No one disputes that it causes cancer, heart disease, and countless other illnesses, so it’s understandable that moving to vaping was seen as a positive step. According to the Ministry of Health: “Vaping has not been around for long enough to be certain about the risks of long-term use. However, if you currently smoke, vaping is less harmful.” Being better than smoking is a low bar, and the newest vaping research is ominous.
Meta-analysis in The New England Journal of Medicine reviewed 107 vaping studies and concluded:
The findings of increased odds of several diseases for e-cigarettes compared with non-use illustrates the substantial risks for people, particularly youth and young adults, who initiate nicotine use with e-cigarettes and former smokers who restart nicotine use with e-cigarettes.
Even without considering the millions of youth who initiate nicotine use with e-cigarettes, these results suggest a need for a careful reassessment of the assumption that e-cigarettes are a substantially less harmful alternative to cigarettes, particularly given the fact that, as consumer products, e-cigarettes are not associated with increased smoking cessation and, over the long run, are associated with less cessation and increased odds of becoming a dual user.
A year later, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found:
Adolescents who exclusively vaped e-cigarettes had similar nicotine exposure as those who smoked tobacco. Given the central role of nicotine in tobacco addiction, the findings suggest that the current generation of vaping products may have comparable abuse liability as traditional cigarettes.
PHCC and CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US) agree that nicotine is highly addictive, dangerous during pregnancy and toxic to developing babies. Youth who vape are also more likely to start smoking. Associate Professor Kelly Burrowes from the University of Auckland has identified over 30 chemicals in a single e-liquid, alongside heavy metals like nickel, tin, and lead.
Given the mounting evidence against vaping, the Ministry of Health’s stance borders on complacency. The harm is already evident in study after study. As we talk about these reports together, Tom, in Wairoa, gets the point. “When do we turn into zombies?” he wonders.
His comment is fitting. Receptors in the brain become less sensitive over time, requiring more nicotine to achieve the same level of satiation. On top of that, vaping companies are now adding Neotame, an artificial sweetener that’s 10,000 times sweeter than sugar. These novel formulations may make quitting almost impossible.
Popular candy and fruit flavoured vapes. (Photo: RNZ)
Follow the money
Roughly 90 percent of vaping products come from China, where manufacturing vapes is now a multi-billion-dollar industry. Given the secrecy in which many private vaping companies operate, it’s difficult to get a full picture of the economics. However, one company, RLX Technology, is publicly listed and releases quarterly figures.
Financial results from RLX, which is a major supplier to New Zealand, are certainly impressive. Last quarter, RLX reported a 47 percent rise in revenue along with a 68 percent boost in profits, to $51million.
Why did RLX become so immensely wealthy? Because vaping products are cheap to make, addictive, and sold without the regulatory burden placed on medicine. In the face of this growth, our government’s new vaping rules simply lack teeth. Unlike Australia, which moved to prescription-only access, Aotearoa chose to only ban disposables. A real nothing burger.
In response, RLX did what any innovative company would do. They simply re-engineered their next generation of products around the disposable ban. On a recent call to investors to announce earnings results, the company proudlysaid:
“. . . the ban on disposable Evapo products inspired the industry to develop alternatives . . . our most recently launched Big Puff products can contain between 14 and 20 milliliters of e-liquid . . . [because] the marginal cost of adding more e-liquid is relatively low . . . Big Puff products have effectively lowered the per milliliter consumption expense of e-liquid for users.”
Translation? A reusable device with more liquid, more nicotine and more puffs at a significant discount per puff. Since each Big Puff carries the equivalent amount of nicotine found in 8-12 packs of cigarettes, the new rules may backfire when teens start using these mega capacity devices.
(Photo: RNZ)
Your kid vapes. Now what?
Nicotine addiction is powerful, and quitting vapes can be just as tough as giving up smokes, sometimes harder. Hemi’s journey was damn hard, and Tom hasn’t even begun his. “I’ll start when I’m ready,” sighs Tom. “For now, I’m still vaping.” The vast majority of vapers have yet to reach their own decision point, having been misled by the government downplaying the toxicity of vapes.
So, if you want your child to quit, where should the discussion start? Many smokers fail on their first attempt to quit. Hemi was an exception going cold turkey, but he feels lucky that he kicked the habit and became a healthier person. His advice is to begin by having an open, non-judgmental, non-confrontational conversation. Share the risks. Work together as a whānau. Some families find it helpful to taper off nicotine levels over time. Others find behavioural therapy helpful.
Call Quitline (0800 778 778) for support. Finally, a trip to your doctor may be well worthwhile. A recent US clinical trial found that the drug varenicline (Champix) combined with counselling helped over half of young vapers quit compared to just 14 percent with a placebo. In New Zealand, Champix is only available to smokers, so if your child both smokes and vapes, they may qualify. It’s not a drug without side effects, however, so a doctor needs to be involved.
But ultimately, the whānau must paddle together. And the government must do more. He waka eke noa.
Fred Christensen hails from Bend, Oregon in the United States, where he led IBM strategic partnerships for over 20 years. After coming here on holiday, he fell in love with New Zealand, and moved here with his wife in 2024. Fred has a Bachelor of Science from University of Oregon, a Master of Science from Humboldt State University and a Master of Business Administration from Northwestern University. He works for the Wairoa District Council, volunteers teaching math at Wairoa College, writes the weekly HealthTalk column for the Wairoa Star and supports his wife who is a GP.
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The New Zealand government is missing in action – or worse, it has deserted to the other side. Intense social pressure is our only way to confront the multi-headed hydra that is our drug problem. Call out the dealers and retailers who are callously immorally profiting from the drug epidemic. We will never fully decolonize until we deal with the drug scourge. And remember: the colonialist regime introduced drugs in the form of alcohol and tobacco for the explicit purpose of separating our people from the land. The fight against colonialism and the fight against drugs are one and the same.
You wrote:
” …The numbers from PHCC are truly sobering. Twenty percent of our rangatahi aged 15 to 17 vape even though it’s illegal at that age. That rises to almost one-third of those from 18 to 24. Māori vape at three times the rate of Pākehā, and deprived areas like Wairoa have more than three times the rate of vapers compared to our wealthiest areas”.
Exactly. Deprivation is at the root of just about everything – addiction generally, meth use, marijuana use, smoking, suicide rates, and now this. *Why* Māori and Pasifika are far more likely to be poor, however defined, than Pākehā – and many other ethnic groups, from what I can see – is where we need to focus our attention.
Ross … agreed. I could have written a somewhat similar piece using the lens of Wairoa, on the state of education, health, and heatthcare for example. On almost any measure, Wairoa ranks at or near the bottom, however I chose vaping because there were aspects which were personally intriguing to me. Two of those are outlined below.
In terms of health aspects, the research is already damming. And yet Healthify NZ refuses to acknowledge that. Just two days before this piece ran, the New York Times, actually published a similar article entitled “Just How Harmful Is Vaping? More Evidence Is Emerging.”
The size, profitability and innovation of the industry are largely untouched subjects. There are major economic interests at play here, where this article just scratches the surface. As they say, “Follow the money.”.
Thank you, very helpful!
How do we get out of this? Will ending deprivation result in lower rates of substance abuse?
Or will ending substance abuse help to provide a route out of poverty?
The first comment I would make is that there is no real possibility that colonialist governments will eradicate poverty. Of course they talk about “reducing poverty” or “eliminating child poverty” (whatever that might look like) but they do nothing because colonialism is based on the principle of social inequality, and the more unequal things are the better it is for colonialism. Nor will the colonialist regime make serious moves to restrict the licit drug business. Alcohol, tobacco and nicotine are too profitable, they yield enormous tax revenues, and they are cynically used to keep people compliant. Pity that they also cause immense harm.
So any change must originate with tangata motu. Since no one in the regime is going to offer us a helping hand, we have to do it ourselves. Eliminating the use of licit and illicit drugs in our personal lives and in our communities is one of the first and most basic steps we can take in the struggle for mana motuhake. It will free energies needed to provide for our own material well-being. It will boost the wairua. It will position us to take on the power of the colonialist regime – and win.