Ronan Payinda: Auckland University study lead on nearly half of schools being within a ten minute walk of a vape store

The more vape stores near schools, the more young people vape.  

Fresh research from Auckland University shows almost half of schools across New Zealand are within a ten minute walk from a vape store 

The government passed a law in 2023 banning specialist vape shops from opening within 300 metres of schools, but the laws didn't apply to hundreds of existing suppliers. 

Study lead Ronan Payinda told Mike Hosking that walking past vape shops on the way to school increases the risk of vaping for those who have never done it before. 

He says he's concerned this introduces a new generation to addictions that may last a lifetime.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
More insight back home though into our battle, if that's
what you want to call it, into vaping. Two years ago,
you remember the government banned specialist vape shops from opening
keyword opening within three hundred meters of a school. However,
existing vape shops were allowed to continue. So we've got
this new data this morning. The shows forty four percent
of schools have a specialist vape shop within a kilometer
of the gate. Now, Ronan Piander Piginda is the study

(00:21):
lead at the Auckland University Medical Faculty and is with
us Ronan.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Morning God to make how are you going very well?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Indeed, this simply shows the laws working. Unless a new
shop has opened and the law was broken, the ones
that were already there are still there and therefore nothing's changed,
is it.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, that's basically the case. The legislation didn't apply to
any of the hundreds of existing bape shops within that
three hundred meter radius, and so we found that for
a large proportion of our schools there were several vape
shops within that close range walking distance.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
And when you say one k, what's the value of
one k as opposed to nine hundred meters versus one
point three ks. Why are we doing this? What's that matter?

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, so it's we did three hundred meters and one
kilometer as well, and that's kind of what students you know,
are reported to be walking on the way to school
on the way home, and it's just a rough radius
for even at sports games and during lunchtimes. What students
are being able to have access.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
To isn't the problem. I mean, we go school gate,
it's a problem. Alarm bells ring? What about to the
kid's house?

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, So the research from overseas and from Australia as well,
it's showing us that even walking past these kind of
stores on the way to and from school and having
them in your local area where a lot of young
people are frequenting it does increase the uptake of vaping
by young people who have never vaped before, and for
those that are already vaping, it increases the use of
vaping products and other nicotine products.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
I don't want to argue with you because I actually
agree with you. And the whole thing's a disaster. And
I said it would be a disaster when they tried
to transfer smoking to vaping. But having said that, is
it really and do we have hard data on this?
Is it really the store or is it things like
peer group pressure?

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, so I definitely agree with that. I think it's
going to be multifactorial. I think we do have research
that shows a really strong association even from just having
the vaping outlets, But absolutely agreeing there. I think the
real element is that young people, you know, in a
friend group, if several of them are vaping, they're going
to encourage their fense to do the same, or they're

(02:17):
just going to normalize it through their behavior. So I
think it goes through those two vehicles.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
I think this whole thing is a disaster. Do you
have an opinion on that. I mean, it's a catastrophic mess.
And it was predicated on the idea that if we
got people to stop smoking and they vaped, it would
be so much better than it was, and that was
always crap and it's proving to be the case.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Yeah, So I think especially for our young people, I'm
especially concerned because a lot of these people, teenagers, even children,
they never even smoked tobacco before, so it wasn't even
providing a way out from addiction, but it's kind of
just chaining a whole new generation to a new form
of addictive nicotine products. So I'm especially concerned for our
teens and our young people who are starting these addictions

(02:57):
that might last a lifetime.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Ye as we should. It nice to talk to you,
Appreciate it. Ronan Fienda out of the Faculty of Medical
and Health Sciences at the University of Althorn. For more
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