Casey Costello: Associate Health Minister on smoking rates reducing, push to keep youth from vaping

There’s encouraging evidence that the "cool" component of vaping among young people is shifting.  

The 2024/25 New Zealand Health Survey shows smoking prevalence is at 6.8% – a slight decline on last year, with 12% of adult Kiwis vaping daily. 

Associate Health Minister Casey Costello told Mike Hosking the Government's cracked down on enforcement for vaping that wasn't in place before. 

She says the last two years have seen youth vaping coming down and the drive to keep under 18s out of the vaping environment is paying dividends. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Later.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
Smoking data out this morning, so we're at six point
eight percent six point eight percent of a smoke these days,
which is down zero point one percent on the previous year.
Vaping though at eleven point seven that's up from three
point five five years ago. Casey Costello is the Associate
Health Minister, mourning, good morning, it's six point eight about it.
I mean they're the hard cause they're not giving up.
We're done.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
No, I think there's still movement. The fifty five to
sixty four age bracket is our target market. The upsiders,
our young people aren't smoking under twenty fours of three
point two, which is below the five percent threshold, but
there is still real opportunity and the quit smoking providers
can see in your opportunity to target that sort of

(00:40):
the stubborn smokers. I think the trouble we had was
we got a real confusion around the message around vaping.
Nobody said it was safe. We said it was safer
than smoking. If you don't smoke, don't vade, But if
you smoke, faithing can help. And we got really conflated,
confused messages through that part.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Completely cocked it up, and we were always going to
but having said that do we know hard data how
many people vape will take up vaping because it's cool
and fun versus how many use it as a genuine
cessation tool.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
The encouraging part. And we're waiting to see the ASH survey,
which will come out in the next week or so.
ASH Survey does the sort of year ten eleven, and
they've been doing this for a number of years. The
last two years of seeing the young people vaping coming down,
which suggests that this coolness component is shifting, that we
are seeing that vaping is much more accessible. We've done

(01:36):
a huge investment and enforcement around the vaping that didn't
exist before we came in, and with a massive drive
to ensure that we're keeping our young under eighteens out
of the vaping environment completely. And I think that's starting
to pay dividend.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Have we made this too political? I get you, you
know it's about health and you don't want to end
up leaving the health system. I get all of that,
but I mean most of this is how much personal
responsibility do we take on this? As listened to Hipkins
in the house yesterday, with this weird dodgy survey on
bruneisl began to faso in any of that crap anyway,
The point being, if you want to smoke, you're going
to smoke. And nothing that Hipkins or you were telling

(02:11):
it is going to change it, is it.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
I think you still got to because of the level
of palm smoke tobacco does. We've still got to keep
driving to build awareness. And yes, you know people will
make bad choices, but sometimes they make bad choices through
just you know, it's too hard. So we've still got
to keep leaning in to provide that support. But absolutely
we got too political. We saw the narrative shifting that

(02:35):
we were always about smoke free, Suddenly we've got all
of these other conflated issues being dragged into it. And
where we started being anti nicotine, well, we've been doing
nicotine replacements for decades. Nicotine wasn't the enemy. It was
the mechanism under which nicotine has delivered to you, which
is the issue, and that's what we've got to challenge.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Good stuff. Casey appreciated Casey Costello, who's the Associate Health Minister.
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