Nonsense about vaping

A Herald story reports:

Kahu, who also lives with asthma, is among the estimated one in five secondary school students who are addicted to vaping.

The figure has emerged from research by the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation, which surveyed more than 19,000 students in Years 9 to 13. Like Kahu, many have never smoked tobacco.

That stat is contradicted by the Ministry of Health’s annual survey.

It instead shows the number of 15-17 year olds vaping daily to be 5.8% in 2020/21, compared to daily smoking among that cohort crashing to just 1.1%.  Back in 2013/14, 7.9% of 15-17 year olds smoked daily.  Professor Beaglehole from ASH has pointed out that 1% of 14 year olds now smoke daily, down from 15% 20 years ago and that as vaping has gone up, smoking has gone down.  So the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation claims that vaping is somehow a gateway for smoking when in fact its rise has seen in the biggest fall in Maori smoking and smoking rates ever.

Now the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation want to ban vape sales within a kilometre of schools. Let’s think about how big an area that is. A circle with a 1 km radius has an area of 3.14 square kilometres which is 314 hectares. So the ARF want to ban vape sales over an area of 314 hectares around every single school.

What would this insane idea mean? It would mean the entire Hamilton CBD would not be allowed to have a shop that sells vapes, as it is within 1 km of Hamilton High School. Clifton Terrace School would knock out the entire Wellington CBD.

Basically it would ban vapes being sold in every single urban area in New Zealand. Such stupidity.