November 25, 2020
Ad voids hampers vape cure
Anti-smoking group Ash says the government needs to soften its stance on vaping if New Zealand is to reach its goal of being smokefree by 2025.
It's blaming a decline in the number of people giving up smoking on restrictions on advertising and a reluctance to promote vaping as a less harmful alternative.
Director Deborah Hart says it's a particular concern for Māori, with 145,000 or almost 29 per cent of all Māori identifying as smokers.
She says now ads for individual vaping products are banned, health promotion agencies should step up and explain the benefits of vaping as a less harmful alternative for those who find it hard to break their addiction to nicotine.
"We're in a difficult line of saying we don't want to promote vaping to young people in particular but we do want to promote it as a quit-smoking tool so we hope this government will do that and really, really quickly," she says.
Deborah Hart says while steady increases in taxes helped some people to quit, the hardcore of smokers is proving tougher to shift.
Copyright © 2020, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com