SST on vaping

This weekend's Sunday Star-Times had a look at vaping.

While overall it's pretty favorable to that folks should be able to switch from smoking to vaping, there's still an overlay of unease about the companies that might be providing vaping kit. Regulatory uncertainty here has kept larger companies out, like the larger tobacco companies' vaping products; smaller NZ and international players have supplied vapers here instead.

With Big Tobacco-owned brands dominant in many markets, former smokers increasingly buy vapes from the same companies that sell the cigarettes they have given up.

Although Big Tobacco describes this pivot as about providing healthier options for smokers, others are cynical.

"What is the evidence that the tobacco industry is moving to a non-tobacco business model?" asks George Thomson, an Associate Professor at University of Otago's Department of Public Health.

Some tobacco companies are pushing hard on vaping, others haven't moved as far into that space. But I don't much get why any of that would be relevant to an appropriate regulatory framework here for vaping. Requiring plain-packaging warnings designed for smoking on reduced harm products doesn't make sense, regardless of whether the product was made by a tobacco company or someone else.

"The lesson that both New Zealand and the world has learnt is that you have to keep the tobacco industry out of the policy process," says Thomson.

"I think that equally applies to the vaping industry. Their business is to sell an addictive product to people and to make money from it."

It would be bad to let large incumbents set the rules in any industry - it would be hard to avoid bias against smaller competitors. But it's silly not to listen to those who have to run their businesses under those regulations.

"The worst thing New Zealand can do is introduce an overly restrictive regulatory framework," says [The New Zealand Initiative's Jenesa] Jeram.

"That's the kind of framework that favours the big companies that can afford to put in large applications and to meet all of the regulatory hurdles, and would come at the expense of the smaller players."

In contrast, Thomson — a self-acknowledged hard-liner on vaping — favours stringent regulation as a step toward New Zealand eventually becoming nicotine free.

It's good that Thomson's made clear that his goal is a nicotine-free New Zealand rather than just reducing the harms from smoking. Regulation intended to stamp out all use of nicotine will differ from that intended to reduce harms. If you want to minimise use, then setting up costly regulations to create a quasi-cartel among the largest companies will reduce consumption.

Jenesa's report on vaping is here.