Teen Vaping in New ZealandA Guide for Parents and Lawmakers

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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

INTRODUCTION

VAPING OVERVIEW: BENEFITS AND RISKSBenefits of Vaping

Risks of Vaping

GOVERNMENT REGULATION OF VAPING ELSEWHERE IN THE WORLDUnited States

United Kingdom

Why Vaping Bans and Flavour Bans Don’t Work

HOW PARENTS CAN PREVENT TEEN VAPINGDiscuss Vaping With Your Children

Prevent Access to Vaping Products

WHERE DO TEENS BUY VAPING PRODUCTS?How the New Zealand Vaping Industry Fights Teen Vaping

HOW THE NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT SHOULD REGULATE THE VAPING INDUSTRY

OUR PROPOSAL FOR NEW ZEALAND VAPING REGULATIONS

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Vaping in New Zealand is a relatively new phenomenon compared to the rest of the world. It was only recently that our government began to allow the domestic sale of vaping products containing nicotine, and only after that change did New Zealand smokers begin to seriously consider e-cigarettes as an alternative to tobacco cigarettes. New Zealand was so late to join the worldwide vaping community, in fact, that we’ve had plenty of time to see how the vaping industry has evolved in the rest of the world.

We can use our observations to predict how the industry will evolve here based on the decisions that we make now.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

As it turns out, the industry has evolved in extremely different ways in the world’s two largest e-cigarette markets. In the United States, there is a deeply concerning trend toward youth e-cigarette use. The latest youth tobacco usage data from the United States suggests that more than 5 million underage teens now vape. An estimated 27.5 percent of U.S. high school students use e-cigarettes, and a significant number of those children are likely to remain addicted to nicotine for the rest of their lives.

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The situation is serious enough that the U.S. government is seriously considering banning entire categories of vaping products nationwide in an attempt to put a stop to youth nicotine initiation.

Meanwhile, lobbyists and PR firms hired by JUUL are actively engaged in conversations with government officials around the world in an attempt to smooth the way for the company’s eventual worldwide expansion.

In the United Kingdom and Europe, regulators recognized early that vaping held incredible appeal for smokers and that e-cigarettes weren’t a passing fad. Those regulators understood the importance of putting common-sense laws in place to ensure that vaping products wouldn’t appeal to anyone but their target market of adult smokers.

Most underage vapers in the United States use the JUUL e-cigarette brand.

The vaping market in New Zealand doesn’t have to evolve in the way that it has in the United States.

In 2019, tobacco harm reduction in New Zealand finds itself at a crossroads. Teen vaping hasn’t become a nationwide problem here as it has in the United States, but the early signs are there – and with JUUL now preparing to launch officially in New Zealand, now is the time for our nation to choose its path forward.

The results speak for themselves.

• Teen vaping – a problem of epidemic proportions in the United States – essentially doesn’t exist in the United Kingdom.

• The United Kingdom’s public health system recommends e-cigarettes to smokers who want to quit.

• At least two hospitals in the United Kingdom have allowed vape shops to open on their grounds, offering an alternative to smokers who are no longer permitted to light up on hospital property.

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This document outlines our vision for how vaping in New Zealand should evolve in 2020 and beyond. In the forthcoming sections, we will describe our plan for a regulated vaping industry that continues to supply adult smokers with appealing and affordable products that help them stop smoking while also preventing youth access to nicotine. We will also describe the consequences that will occur if our government addresses the future of vaping in the wrong way.

• The mandate of Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 is that we achieve a nationwide smoking rate of less than 5 percent by 2025.

• Vaping represents our most realistic way of achieving that goal, but smokers will only switch to vaping if they have a wide variety of appealing and affordable products from which to choose.

• At the same time, we can’t lose sight of the fact that nicotine is an incredibly addictive drug and that those who do not already smoke should not vape.

• Government regulation must balance the goal of tobacco harm reduction with the need to protect children from nicotine addiction.

It is virtually impossible to overstate the importance that vaping holds for the future of public health in New Zealand.

• It is important to the future grandchildren of today’s smokers. They deserve the opportunity to enjoy the love, wisdom and companionship of their grandparents.

• It is important to government and public health officials who have watched 5,000 New Zealanders die each year from smoking for far too long.

• It is important to the concerned parents of New Zealand and to their children, who won’t treat nicotine addiction with the fear and respect that it deserves until it’s too late.

What happens to the vaping industry in New Zealand, therefore, isn’t just important to vapers and to current smokers who haven’t yet made the switch to vaping. It is important to all of us.

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VA P I N G O V E R V I E W

The modern e-cigarette was invented by Chinese pharmacist Hon Lik in 2003. Lik was a smoker and designed the e-cigarette to help himself quit. From the beginning, it was obvious to Lik that the e-cigarette had enormous potential as a smoking cessation tool. Lik patented his invention. Vaping products began to fan out from China, and e-cigarettes took off rapidly in almost every market. An estimated 41 million adults around the world now vape.

Despite the massive adoption of e-cigarettes among smokers, there are still around 1 billion tobacco users in the world.

A vaping device uses a heating coil made from resistance wire to heat a nicotine-infused liquid, creating a vapour that the smoker inhales. Using an e-cigarette, the smoker experiences the satisfaction of nicotine absorption through the lungs while enjoying flavours and rituals similar to those of smoking. Many people have quit smoking successfully with e-cigarettes after failing to quit using traditional nicotine replacement products and other smoking cessation aids.

Vaping products are marketed as tobacco alternatives for smokers. The only people who should buy e-cigarettes are adult smokers who either can’t or won’t discontinue nicotine use but would consider using a less harmful alternative that’s equally satisfying.

B E N E F I T S O F VA P I N G

Benefits and Risks

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The primary risk of vaping is the possibility that non-smokers might initiate nicotine use by buying vaping products. Most of the people who smoke cigarettes today initiated nicotine use while they were teens, and teens don’t fully understand the danger of nicotine addiction until it’s too late.

Researchers almost universally agree that vaping appears significantly less risky than smoking. For those who already smoke cigarettes, vaping has great potential as an alternative that can drastically cut the massive number of smoking-related deaths that occur each year in New Zealand and in the rest of the world. The fact that vaping appears less harmful than smoking, however, does not mean that it is harmless.

• Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Once addiction sets in, it is very difficult to discontinue nicotine use.

• Nicotine use does have some health risks. It is generally agreed that nicotine use is particularly risky during adolescence, when the brain is still developing.

• Those who develop nicotine addictions will spend money on the addiction that could have been spent on more worthwhile things.

• Nicotine use is illegal for children in New Zealand under the age of 18.

R I S K S O F VA P I N G

The goal of the New Zealand vaping industry, then, is to make adult smokers aware that vaping presents the opportunity of an alternative that’s potentially less harmful than tobacco without giving children the false impression that nicotine is harmless.

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As stated earlier in the document, the United States currently faces a growing problem of underage vaping. In the world’s second largest vaping market – the United Kingdom – teen vaping hasn’t become a trend as it has in the United States. The difference comes down to the diverging ways in which the governments of those nations have chosen to regulate the vaping industry.

Here in New Zealand, we have an opportunity to observe how the vaping industry has evolved in the rest of the world and regulate e-cigarettes in a way that creates the greatest possible benefit for public health while ensuring that vaping products remain unappealing and difficult to obtain for those who should not use them.

Let’s examine the differences in how the governments of the world’s two biggest vaping markets have chosen to regulate e-cigarettes.

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In the United States, the federal government announced its intention in 2016 to subject vaping products to the same regulations as tobacco products. The government allowed all vaping products on the market as of 2016 to remain on the market temporarily and directed the makers of those products to go through a burdensome and costly application process to have those products approved for sale by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by 2018 (the application deadline was later pushed back to 2022 before finally being moved forward to 2020).

When the U.S. government announced its proposed regulations for the vaping industry, the JUUL e-cigarette was already on the market. Each pod for the JUUL delivered a massive nicotine dose of 59 mg/ml – about as much as an entire pack of cigarettes. It was therefore about as addictive as tobacco cigarettes. It was also small and fashionable. The makers of the JUUL e-cigarette played up those features with a massive youth-oriented marketing campaign that some have said made the product more appealing to children.

Today, JUUL’s marketing strategy is the subject of a criminal investigation by the U.S. government. Some have alleged that JUUL intentionally marketed their product to children – just as the tobacco companies once did. For the more than 5 million children in the U.S. who already vape, though, the investigation is too late.

From the beginning, it was obvious that the JUUL brand was the catalyst of the teen vaping problem in the United States. The U.S. government had the power to remove JUUL from the market or force the company to reduce the nicotine in its products to less addictive levels. The Food and Drug Administration could have put either of those policies in place years ago, when it became evident that JUUL was the cause of the teen vaping epidemic. Instead, the government threatened in 2019 to remove all flavoured vaping products from the market.

As this document will explain, a flavour ban would have disastrous consequences. The United States now faces the possible removal of most vaping products from the market even though only one of those products has proven to be problematic for youth. This situation has arisen because the U.S. government failed to use common sense in regulating the vaping industry and failed to act when it became obvious that one brand was taking its marketing efforts too far.

Next, let’s examine what might have happened in the United States if the government had regulated the vaping industry in a logical way.

U N I T E D S TAT E S

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Vaping products began to proliferate around the world in 2008-2009, and by the early 2010s, it was obvious that smokers were latching on to vaping in a big way. In 2014, the European Union put a law in place – the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) – that placed certain limitations on the tobacco industry in general and the vaping industry in particular. Most importantly, the TPD limited the addictive potential of e-cigarettes by specifying a maximum legal nicotine strength of 20mg/ml for all vaping products.

The United Kingdom is the world’s second largest vaping market after the United States, and the nation follows the rules outlined in the Tobacco Products Directive. At the time that the TPD was put in place, JUUL pods were only available in one nicotine strength of 59 mg/ml. As JUUL pods contained nearly three times the legal limit of nicotine specified in the TPD, they were illegal in the United Kingdom. JUUL never took hold of the U.K. vaping industry as it did in the United States.

A certain percentage of children everywhere will experiment with nicotine – especially if the sellers of those products don’t verify customers’ ages as they should. The difference between the United Kingdom and the United States is that, in the U.K., children who try the low-nicotine products that are available quickly lose interest and move on to other activities. In the U.S., children who experiment with nicotine products buy the JUUL. They experience the massive nicotine hit and become addicted.

Because common sense government regulations were put in place early, vaping has helped to bring major public health benefits to the United Kingdom. The U.K. public health system fully supports smokers’ efforts to quit smoking with e-cigarettes, and as millions of former smokers across the U.K. have shown, smokers can successfully switch to vaping without the enormous nicotine dose that the JUUL e-cigarette delivers.

With the U.K. now preparing to leave the European Union, whether the nation will still abide by the TPD in the future remains to be seen. As one might expect given the company’s past, JUUL has already begun lobbying with the U.K. government in an attempt to undermine the existing regulations and remove the restrictions on e-liquid nicotine strengths. Considering what has happened in the United States, it is unsurprising that many public health officials in the U.K. would prefer not to see JUUL have their way.

U N I T E D K I N G D O M

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A massive 2018 study of more than 20,000 adult e-cigarette users proved that most adult vapers do not use e-liquids with tobacco, mint or menthol flavours. The study also showed that the availability of appealing flavours actually encourages adults to make the switch.

Banning products that improve public health – while keeping a product like JUUL that’s both intensely addictive and irresistible to children – is counterproductive to New Zealand’s goal of becoming smoke free by 2025, and it will result in no net benefit for youth nicotine uptake.The JUUL brand is partially owned by tobacco giant Altria. JUUL operates according to the Big Tobacco playbook and didn’t hesitate to remove its flavoured products from the market in the United States. It doesn’t matter; they’ve already won the battle for control of the vaping industry in the U.S. and have already attracted millions of teen users. A ban on flavoured e-liquids in the U.S. will not hurt JUUL; it will actually help them.

On the surface, banning vaping products – or banning flavoured e-liquids – may seem like a simple solution to the problem of teen vaping. History has shown us, however, that prohibition doesn’t work. Preventing teen vaping actually requires us to make vaping products less appealing and less available to children while ensuring that they remain appealing and available to adult smokers – and that requires the combined efforts of parents, the vaping industry and the government.

W H Y VA P I N G B A N S A N D F L AV O U R B A N S D O N ’ T W O R K

We have an opportunity in New Zealand to address the problem of teen vaping before it starts. We also have the benefit of wisdom gained from watching what has happened in the rest of the world. Observation can lead us to only one conclusion. Banning flavoured e-liquids – or banning all vaping products – is the wrong way to combat underage vaping.

In the early 20th century, the U.S. government attempted to enact a nationwide prohibition on alcohol sales. Prohibition didn’t work, though, because people have a way of feeding their vices regardless of the legality. The Prohibition era also had terrible consequences that will repeat themselves in the event of a ban on vaping or on flavoured e-liquids.

• Around the world, about 1 billion people already smoke cigarettes. Many of those people have tried unsuccessfully to quit. Millions of former smokers have already switched to vaping, and millions more will continue switching each year because they know that vaping is potentially less harmful than smoking.

• People who want to buy vaping products will buy those products whether they are legal or not. Banning flavoured e-liquids won’t make those products go away, but a ban will drive the industry underground.

• People who want to buy flavoured e-liquids will acquire those products on the black market. Some people will import e-liquid in bulk from overseas and sell it privately. Others will attempt to make their own e-liquids under potentially dangerous and unsanitary conditions.

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Vaping is the new smoking, and it may one day render traditional tobacco products completely obsolete. In that sense, though, parents must prepare themselves to have the same conversations with their teens about vaping that they have about smoking. The best way to approach the subject is with openness and honesty.

H O W PA R E N T S C A N P R E V E N T T E E N VA P I N G

D I S C U S S VA P I N G W I T H Y O U R C H I L D R E N

• Explain that e-cigarettes exist because they present a potentially less harmful alternative to smoking for those who already smoke and can’t quit.

• Explain that although e-cigarettes may be less harmful than tobacco cigarettes, they definitely are not harmless because most e-cigarettes still contain nicotine.

• Explain that nicotine is an incredibly addictive substance, and it is very, very hard to stop using it once you start. Nicotine provides no health benefit, and consumption of nicotine can actually be harmful to adolescent brains that are still developing. It can affect functions such as memory, learning and attention span.

Do not buy vaping products for your children – even if those products are nicotine free. If your children have friends who vape, explain to your children that their friends have likely picked up addictions that will haunt them for the rest of their lives, draining their wallets and causing possible long-term health consequences while providing no benefit. There is absolutely nothing cool about addiction.

You might also consider telling your children that, by choosing not to vape, they are actually playing an active role in one of the greatest public health revolutions to hit the world since people first began to understand the harm that smoking causes.

Smoking will kill around 5,000 people in New Zealand this year. Smoking also kills around 480,000 people in the United States each year – and despite the fact that vaping has the potential to prevent those deaths, the U.S. government is seriously considering taking vaping products away from adults because kids are buying them. No public health benefit is worth the risk of having a new generation of children saddled with nicotine addiction.

It is important for teens to recognize the importance that vaping could have for public health. By choosing not to vape, teens are actually helping to keep vaping products in the hands of adults who need them.

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One of the most common ways in which teens buy vaping products is by purchasing them through online merchants who ship worldwide and don’t verify customers’ ages. To restrict access to vaping-related sites, you might consider blocking keywords like “vape” and “JUUL” in your home router. If possible, it would also be wise to have your router send a report when a child searches for a restricted keyword. Remember that preventing teen vaping begins at home, and the best way to approach the subject of vaping is with openness and honesty.

If you vape, talk about it with your children. Explain that, like most adults who smoke, you have found nicotine addiction impossible to break and have decided to switch to an alternative that may both reduce the harm done to your own body and protect your family from the effects of second-hand smoke. Explain that your decision to vape in no way means that your children should vape as well. Tell your children that vaping will only lead to them being in the same position as you some years down the road – with an addiction that they don’t want and can’t quit.

Lastly, don’t forget to prevent access to your e-liquid and other vape gear. If your children are younger, storing your gear in a high cabinet should be sufficient. If your children are older, consider storing your vape gear in a lockable box.

P R E V E N T A C C E S S T O VA P I N G P R O D U C T S

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• Parents and older siblings may buy e-cigarettes for younger teens, perhaps because they don’t know that e-cigarettes contain nicotine or because they incorrectly believe that vaping is completely harmless. It is important for all parents and young adults to understand that there is a world of difference between “harm reduction” and “harmless.” While many experts believe that vaping may reduce the harm associated with tobacco use, it is definitely not harmless.

• As mentioned above, some teens may use pre-paid credit cards to buy vaping products from overseas merchants that don’t verify customers’ ages. In some cases, teens import vaping products in bulk and sell those products to other students.

• Teens may buy vaping products from shops unaccustomed to selling tobacco products, such as two-dollar stores and dairies. Stores that don’t typically sell R18 products may display items such as disposable e-cigarettes on the counter next to products like candy and energy supplements. Such stores often fail to check ID and should not be selling vaping products.

• Some teens may purchase vaping products from traditional tobacco retailers such as petrol stations, supermarkets and chemists. As those retailers already have extensive experience selling tobacco products, they are well aware of the fact that they need to be asking for identification before selling products with nicotine. Keeping vaping products in those stores – where tobacco products are already sold – ensures that adult smokers have access to e-cigarettes and are aware that vaping exists as an alternative to tobacco smoking. However, our government must remain vigilant in educating those retailers and checking them for compliance.

W H E R E D O T E E N S B U Y VA P I N G P R O D U C T S ?

The most important thing that anyone can do to prevent teen vaping is described in the previous section of this document. Parents everywhere, by talking openly and honestly to their children about vaping, can remove the desire to vape before it even starts.

Sometimes, however, teens may make the wrong choices even though they know those choices are harmful. You’re well aware of that fact if you have ever been a smoker yourself, because there is an 82-percent chance that you started smoking when you were underage. That’s why we have laws in place to prevent the sale of nicotine products to minors.

Since minors can’t legally buy nicotine, how are they buying e-cigarettes?

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Companies in the independent New Zealand vaping industry are small businesses mostly founded by former smokers whose lives were changed by vaping. Owners of vaping businesses believe that e-cigarettes should be purchased only by those who already use nicotine and either can’t or won’t quit. People who don’t already use nicotine – even adults – should not purchase vaping products. People in the independent vaping industry operate with a mindset completely different to that of traditional retailers.

The underage use of vaping products is particularly unacceptable to members of the vaping industry. We recognize that teen vaping undermines the core goal of the industry and poses a serious threat to the industry’s future health. Professionals in the New Zealand vaping industry are cognizant of the need for self-regulation and have enacted business practices designed to prevent e-cigarette sales to teens.

In a vape shop, all products are R18. For that reason, teens are extremely unlikely to acquire vaping products from brick-and-mortar vape shops because all vape shop owners train their employees to ask for identification before making any sale.

Online vape shops in New Zealand are equally vigilant in ensuring that vaping products remain in the hands of adults. Our standard industry practices include verifying the customer’s age during the checkout process and requiring an adult signature and ID check at the time of delivery.

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• Research has shown conclusively that most adult vapers do not use tobacco-flavoured e-liquids. In fact, many adults specifically avoid using those flavours because they don’t want to be reminded of their tobacco addiction.

• Banning the legal sale of flavoured e-liquids will not make those flavours go away. It will, however, cause vapers to seek those flavours via alternative – and potentially dangerous – sources. Prohibiting a product never works if people want that product badly enough.

• Banning flavoured e-liquids also won’t prevent teens from vaping. To stop teen vaping before it starts, we need to educate our parents and children. We also need to target the retail outlets illegally selling vaping products to children.

• Our lawmakers must realize that JUUL is partially owned by Altria, making JUUL a Big Tobacco brand. Altria is a company with considerable power and wealth, and they can affect news reporting in subtle ways. In addition, the JUUL brand has a market share in the U.S. vaping industry that exceeds 70 percent. Basing our regulatory decisions on vaping news coming out of the U.S. would be a grave mistake as American news about the vaping industry often contains crucial omissions and mistruths.

H O W T H E N E W Z E A L A N D G O V E R N M E N T S H O U L D R E G U L AT E T H E VA P I N G I N D U S T R Y

As the New Zealand Parliament considers how best to approach regulation of the vaping industry, we urge our lawmakers to follow the European model. The Tobacco Products Directive is a set of common-sense rules that minimize youth appeal of vaping while ensuring that adults will continue to have unrestricted and affordable access to vaping products.

These are the key points that our lawmakers must consider as they decide how to regulate the vaping industry in New Zealand.

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• Our government should immediately enact an educational campaign with the goal of reaching smokers, parents and teens.

o We should encourage smokers to switch to vaping if they are unable to quit by other means.

o We should explain to parents that vaping exists to provide an alternative form of nicotine consumption for current tobacco users. Those who do not smoke – especially those who are too young to smoke – should not vape.

o We should tell teens that vaping products present an enormous potential public health benefit for those who already smoke. A teen’s decision to not vape keeps that teen free from a potential lifetime of nicotine addiction and helps to ensure that adult smokers continue to have access to a potentially less harmful alternative.

• Our government must ensure that adult smokers continue to have access to vaping products that are appealing and affordable. Flavoured products should remain available, and vaping products should not be subject to the same taxes that apply to tobacco products.

• Our government should end the personal importation of vaping products from overseas sellers. There will always be online sellers who fail to properly verify purchasers’ ages, and teens will always find and exploit those loopholes. We can prevent teen vaping by tightly controlling the distribution of nicotine products in New Zealand.

• Our government should restrict the sale of vaping products to licensed tobacco sellers and dedicated vape shops that properly train their employees to check identification before selling age-restricted products. Random compliance checks should be put in place to ensure that sales to minors do not occur.

• If Big Tobacco vaping brands such as JUUL are to be allowed in New Zealand, those brands must be monitored closely to ensure that they do not continue their longstanding traditions of youth-oriented marketing.

O U R P R O P O S A L F O R N E W Z E A L A N D VA P I N G R E G U L AT I O N S

Proper regulation of the vaping industry in New Zealand requires a balanced approach that combines education of parents and teens with tight control over how nicotine products are distributed in Aotearoa. Only through this balanced approach can we achieve the maximum possible public health benefit from vaping while restricting underage access and ensuring that vaping products hold no appeal for teens.