New research has cast doubt over the usefulness of vapes in tackling smoking.
A study looking at 25 years of data on New Zealand teenagers shows there was steep decline in youth smoking rates before vapes came on the scene.
Instead of displacing smoking, it suggests vapes are a gateway to cigarettes for young people.
University of Auckland research fellow Dr Lucy Hardie says these figures are unsurprising, considering young people are primarily targeted by the advertising.
"They use social media influencers and really glamourous advertising to really target young people, because that's where you make your money. If you can get young people - you've potentially got a lifetime of addiction."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
So it turns out vaping may not be our silver
bullet to a smoke free future. A study by health
researchers here in An, Australia analyzed twenty five years of
data looking at the impact vaping had on the smoking
trends of fourteen to fifteen year olds. It shows that
while e cigarette companies argue vapes are replacing smoking in
young people, this is not the case. University of Auckland
(00:33):
research fellow doctor Lucy Hardy was part of the research
team and she is with me now. Good morning Lucy.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Good morning Francisca.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hey, can you talk me through the findings of the study.
What have you found about the smoking habits of these
young people since vapes was introduced.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, So what we did is we looked at a
sort of twenty five year period, so it's quite a
lot of data. It's a really big study, and we
looked at the decline in smoking rates before the advent
of vaping and what happened afterwards, and what we would
expect to see if vaping had been sort of contributing
to a decline and smoking among this age group was
(01:12):
that the slope or the scale the rate of decline
would actually have increased. But what we found is that
it actually has slowed rather than sped up. So what
this means is that we hypothesized that vaping as part
of the sort of social norms we've got quite high
(01:34):
rates among this age group in New Zealand may actually
be leading young people to be experimenting with smoking rather
than sort of being pushed away from it.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
And I wondered too, if there's a lot of vapor
going around, the people who were smoking who found a
little bit like outsiders for a while there suddenly done
so much.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah. I mean this study is specifically fourteen and fifteen
year old, so they do actually have really low rates
of smoking. Anyway, what we're really concerned about is sort
of that experimentation that leads on to, you know, down
the track that we might see smoking becoming more popular
or just more acceptable in a way that it hasn't
(02:17):
been for quite some years.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Is this finding what you expected?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Well, I guess, I mean, I do a lot of
research that looks at the marketing of these products, and
it's really clear to me when you do a deep
dive into what the industry is doing, that they're really
targeting young people. So in some respects, it's not a
surprise at all, because I can see they use social
media influences and really glamorous advertising to really target young people,
(02:46):
because that's really where you make your money. If you
can get young people people when they're young, you've potentially
got a lifetime of addiction and consumerism. So it's not
a surprise to me, but it might be a surprise
for other people that had also been thinking that previous
research was showing that it was displacing smoking for these
(03:08):
young people.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
You found a couple of things. Obviously that smoking wasn't
decreasing as fast as you'd hope, but you also found
that a ninefold that there was a ninefold increase in
daily vaping from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty three with
this age group. What do you put that down.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
To, Well, there's a number of factors. One is the
advertising and marketing that I just mentioned, but another one
is that we've had really lenient vaping restrictions in New
Zealand and so in fact, there was almost maybe just
over a two year period where there was no restrictions
at all, and I think that's just really normalized vaping
(03:48):
as part of New Zealand culture. We just were too
slow to act, and when we did act, it was
really weak, And we just need to really ramp up
what we're doing to protect young people. It's got implications
for their vape use but also for smoking. So this
data gives us good evidence to make those changes really confidently.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Do you think this evidence will be enough to encourage
them to act on youth vaping?
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Well, I would hope so, but I'm just not sure
if we just haven't seen very strong or decisive action
in this space over subsequent governments, So we really need
to advocate people need to advocate for those changes.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
As a parent of teenagers, and you know, just take
off like you wouldn't believe. I'm very worried, and I
think a lot of people, a lot of other people
are that we've just missed the boat around policy and vaping.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah. Absolutely, I'm a mother myself. I've got five teenagers,
so I've got a lot of anecdotal evidence to support
of the sort of academic research I do as well.
But I think, you know, like I said, we're slow,
and there's so much more that we could be doing.
We can be looking at other jurisdictions how they're managing
this as a so for instance, in Australia they've got
(05:06):
a s of pharmacy only model. There's things that we
can do which would be much more effective. Unfortunately, the
most effective thing we can do to reduce smoking would
have been to introduce some of those measures that were
repealed in twenty twenty three, like the smoke free generation,
(05:26):
low nicotine products and reducing the availability. And we really
could do the same things with saving as well. I
can't think of another product that is so sold so widely.
I mean you can get it in alcohol outlets, convenience stores, supermarkets,
there's hundreds of specialist stores. It's really widely available and
(05:46):
really cheap. So we could increase the prices to sort
of push it out of the range of these young
fourteen and fifteen.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Year olds just finding lucy. This study completely contradicts a
twenty twenty study that said vaping might be replacing smoking
in young people. It's essentially looking at the same data.
How we come to a different kind of conclusion.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Well, for status, we've got an extra sort of five
years on top of that, so we just know more
we've seen, We've got much more to go on. They
thing's been around for a lot longer. But what we
also did is we took a much wider period of
time before that study as well, so we took since
nineteen ninety nine, so we've got really long, you know,
(06:27):
a wide range of data that we can model what
we would expect to see rather than just using a
shorter period of time.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Doctor Lucy Hardy, thank you so much for your time
this morning. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
So it turns out vaping may not be our silver
bullet to a smoke free future. A study by health
researchers here in An, Australia analyzed twenty five years of
data looking at the impact vaping had on the smoking
trends of fourteen to fifteen year olds. It shows that
while e cigarette companies argue vapes are replacing smoking in
young people, this is not the case. University of Auckland
(00:33):
research fellow doctor Lucy Hardy was part of the research
team and she is with me now. Good morning Lucy.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Good morning Francisca.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hey, can you talk me through the findings of the study.
What have you found about the smoking habits of these
young people since vapes was introduced.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, So what we did is we looked at a
sort of twenty five year period, so it's quite a
lot of data. It's a really big study, and we
looked at the decline in smoking rates before the advent
of vaping and what happened afterwards, and what we would
expect to see if vaping had been sort of contributing
to a decline and smoking among this age group was
(01:12):
that the slope or the scale the rate of decline
would actually have increased. But what we found is that
it actually has slowed rather than sped up. So what
this means is that we hypothesized that vaping as part
of the sort of social norms we've got quite high
(01:34):
rates among this age group in New Zealand may actually
be leading young people to be experimenting with smoking rather
than sort of being pushed away from it.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
And I wondered too, if there's a lot of vapor
going around, the people who were smoking who found a
little bit like outsiders for a while there suddenly done
so much.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah. I mean this study is specifically fourteen and fifteen
year old, so they do actually have really low rates
of smoking. Anyway, what we're really concerned about is sort
of that experimentation that leads on to, you know, down
the track that we might see smoking becoming more popular
or just more acceptable in a way that it hasn't
(02:17):
been for quite some years.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Is this finding what you expected?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Well, I guess, I mean, I do a lot of
research that looks at the marketing of these products, and
it's really clear to me when you do a deep
dive into what the industry is doing, that they're really
targeting young people. So in some respects, it's not a
surprise at all, because I can see they use social
media influences and really glamorous advertising to really target young people,
(02:46):
because that's really where you make your money. If you
can get young people people when they're young, you've potentially
got a lifetime of addiction and consumerism. So it's not
a surprise to me, but it might be a surprise
for other people that had also been thinking that previous
research was showing that it was displacing smoking for these
(03:08):
young people.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
You found a couple of things. Obviously that smoking wasn't
decreasing as fast as you'd hope, but you also found
that a ninefold that there was a ninefold increase in
daily vaping from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty three with
this age group. What do you put that down.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
To, Well, there's a number of factors. One is the
advertising and marketing that I just mentioned, but another one
is that we've had really lenient vaping restrictions in New
Zealand and so in fact, there was almost maybe just
over a two year period where there was no restrictions
at all, and I think that's just really normalized vaping
(03:48):
as part of New Zealand culture. We just were too
slow to act, and when we did act, it was
really weak, And we just need to really ramp up
what we're doing to protect young people. It's got implications
for their vape use but also for smoking. So this
data gives us good evidence to make those changes really confidently.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Do you think this evidence will be enough to encourage
them to act on youth vaping?
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Well, I would hope so, but I'm just not sure
if we just haven't seen very strong or decisive action
in this space over subsequent governments, So we really need
to advocate people need to advocate for those changes.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
As a parent of teenagers, and you know, just take
off like you wouldn't believe. I'm very worried, and I
think a lot of people, a lot of other people
are that we've just missed the boat around policy and vaping.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Yeah. Absolutely, I'm a mother myself. I've got five teenagers,
so I've got a lot of anecdotal evidence to support
of the sort of academic research I do as well.
But I think, you know, like I said, we're slow,
and there's so much more that we could be doing.
We can be looking at other jurisdictions how they're managing
this as a so for instance, in Australia they've got
(05:06):
a s of pharmacy only model. There's things that we
can do which would be much more effective. Unfortunately, the
most effective thing we can do to reduce smoking would
have been to introduce some of those measures that were
repealed in twenty twenty three, like the smoke free generation,
(05:26):
low nicotine products and reducing the availability. And we really
could do the same things with saving as well. I
can't think of another product that is so sold so widely.
I mean you can get it in alcohol outlets, convenience stores, supermarkets,
there's hundreds of specialist stores. It's really widely available and
(05:46):
really cheap. So we could increase the prices to sort
of push it out of the range of these young
fourteen and fifteen.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Year olds just finding lucy. This study completely contradicts a
twenty twenty study that said vaping might be replacing smoking
in young people. It's essentially looking at the same data.
How we come to a different kind of conclusion.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Well, for status, we've got an extra sort of five
years on top of that, so we just know more
we've seen, We've got much more to go on. They
thing's been around for a lot longer. But what we
also did is we took a much wider period of
time before that study as well, so we took since
nineteen ninety nine, so we've got really long, you know,
(06:27):
a wide range of data that we can model what
we would expect to see rather than just using a
shorter period of time.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Doctor Lucy Hardy, thank you so much for your time
this morning. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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