Dear Ministry of Health,
1) Please can you tell me how many non-smoking teenagers in New Zealand have taken up vaping? What are the numbers in the 20-30 age range?
2) How many young people in these age brackets were previously smoking and have switched to vaping?
3) What advice did the Ministry of Health draw upon when deciding to allow vaping products to become widely available in New Zealand? What were the main reasons for deciding to go ahead?
4) What are the current requirements for Vaping companies to specify the ingredients of the Vape products they sell?
5) What ingredients in Vape products is the Ministry of Health aware of, and what research has been done on the health effects of these ingredients?
6) From the research considered by the Ministry of Health, what does the Ministry consider to be the main health effects of Vaping and how serious does the Ministry consider these health effects to be?
7) What plans does the Ministry of Health have to educate the public (particularly young people) about the health effects of Vaping?
8) What plans does the Ministry of Health have to require Vaping companies to display health warnings on their products?
9) Considering the numbers of people who have quit cigarettes for Vaping, compared to the numbers of non-smokers who have taken up Vaping, does the Ministry of Health consider that Vaping products are, on balance, making a positive contribution to the health of New Zealanders?

Yours faithfully,

Michael Vaughan

Dear Ministry of Health (fao Deborah Woodley),

Thank you for your letter.

Before vaping products arrived in New Zealand, I believe we had reached a point in New Zealand at which smoking had lost the 'cool factor' among young people. I don't have figures, but I am confident that the numbers of young people smoking in New Zealand was much-reduced compared to 5 or 10 years ago. Less lungs were being damaged by unnatural, toxic substances being inhaled.

I understand that Vaping products were allowed to become widely-available in N.Z. to assist people who genuinely wanted to stop or reduce cigarette smoking. But the massive downside is that inhaling unnatural and harmful substances has become very trendy again among young people, in the form of Vaping. Preferable to cigarette smoking yes - but still harmful as you acknowledge.

I have two sons, aged 21 and 17. Both were non-smokers before taking up Vaping when it became trendy, shortly after Vape products arrived in NZ. Both started with the non-nicotine products and both 'graduated' to the nicotine Vapes. Both have extensive friend groups who have gone down a similar pathway.

In your letter, you state that current evidence indicates that the prevalence of daily vapers who are not smokers is relatively small. I seriously doubt that this is true. Almost none of my two sons' friend groups were cigarette smokers - they simply took up Vaping because it has become trendy....and moved from non-nicotine to nicotine Vape products. So we are creating a whole new body of nicotine addiction among young people in New Zealand. Well done, Ministry of Health. I have had to take both my sons to our G.P. to help them kick this new addiction.

Please can you inform me of the evidence upon which your statement is based. If numbers are not available, I strongly suggest that this is something that should be investigated immediately by the Ministry of Health.

This large-scale uptake of vaping by young people could have been avoided while still making the Vape products available to the appropriate group of people, i.e. smokers wanting to quit smoking. Quite simply, the products could have been made available to the these individuals through G.P.'s.

I'm not sure how frequently you walk around the areas of Auckland, Wellington etc where there are bars and restaurants frequented by young people. But I suggest that you do so with your M.O.H. colleagues and witness at first-hand the numbers of young people inhaling these damaging Vape products into their lungs.

As you can tell, I'm really disgusted that this situation has been allowed to occur. The Ministry of Health has a responsibility to protect the health of New Zealanders and this situation could so easily have been prevented, whilst still enabling smokers to access the products for the right reasons in a suitably-controlled manner.

Yours faithfully,

Michael Vaughan

Dear Ministry of Health,

Thank you for the information supplied in response to my request.

There is a high likelihood of 'under-reporting' among young people in any survey on this topic. It is worrying that the Youth 19 Rangatahi Smart Survey found that:

"Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of students who ever vaped and nearly half (48 percent) of regular vapers had never smoked cigarettes."

Question 1: Has the Ministry of Health used measures other than surveys to establish the prevalence of young non-smokers taking up vaping? If so, what other measures have been taken and what were the findings? If not, would the Ministry of Health consider applying other measures techniques to gather this information?

Question 3: Is the Ministry of Health aware of recent research linking vaping with lung cancer and bladder cancer and how will this research be acted upon by the Ministry of Health?

Question 2: Has the Ministry of Health made any contact with School Principals to obtain their views on this issue. School Principals and teachers tend to have a pretty good handle on what's going on at ground level in their schools and their information may be a useful addition to the self-disclosure information collected in student surveys (which may well feature 'under-reporting')

Yours faithfully,

Michael Vaughan