Letitia Harding: Asthma and Respiratory Foundation chief executive on new stats around high school student vaping rates

Vaping rates are dropping across younger school students, but it's on the rise among senior students.

The Asthma and Respiratory Foundation survey finds 12 percent of high school students reported vaping in the seven days before the survey was taken - compared to 26 percent in 2021.

However, 26 percent of Year 13 students are weekly vapers - doubling over the last three years.

Chief Executive Letitia Harding told Ryan Bridge the increase is probably down to regulation coming in pretty late for older students.

“You’ve got this group that had very little regulations around taking up vaping and some are very, very high in nicotine doses as well, because back then, the nicotine contained in vapes had up to 53 milligrams of nicotine in them, so you’ve got this group that has probably become quite addicted to these nicotine vapes, and that’s carried on through.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
New data this morning from the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation
has found that youth vaping rates have dropped more than
fifty percent over the past three years. It's a survey
shows that just twelve percent of year nine to thirteen
students had vapd in the last seven days when the
survey was done. It was down from twenty seven percent
in twenty twenty one. Lea Tisha Harding is the Asthma

(00:23):
and Respiratory Foundation New Zealand chief executive. She's with me
this morning. Good morning, Good morning, Ryan, thank you for
being here.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Is this flying the face of other stats we've just
had recently about youth vaping.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
No, Actually, if you look at the New Zealand Health
Survey that was put out last week, it's a similar story.
We've found that that younger group has actually declined in vaping,
but the older group is actually the one which has increased.
So it is actually in line with what the New
Zealand Health Survey was showing as well.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
So you think that your theory is that the the
younger people who are not vaping as much as the
older ones, that's new regulations that's changed that.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, definitely, we think it's the regulations and also the
education around you know, the harms of vaping and the
awareness out there. I think that's had a big impact.
But as I said, although overall we've seen a reduction
compared to when we ran our twenty twenty one survey,
so we reported vaping of twelve point two percent back then,

(01:29):
now compared to twenty six percent in the year thirteen.
That's dramatically increased to twenty six percent having vaped in
the last seven days, whereas it was only twelve percent
in twenty twenty one. So this sort of stands to
reason if we look at our year ten eleven, twelve thirteen,
that was actually reducing back in twenty twenty one, but

(01:49):
it's increased in.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
This survey, right. Why do you think that is?

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah, I think it's because if we look at when
regulations came and even the R eighteen, the restriction of
buying nicotine containing vapes, that wasn't until November of twenty
twenty and of course we ran the first survey in
August of twenty twenty one. So you've got this group
that had very little regulations around taking up vaping and
some of very very high nicotine doses as well, because

(02:17):
of course, back then the nicotine containing vapes had up
to fifty fifty three milligrams of nicotine in them. So
you've got this group that has probably become quite addicted
to these nicotine vapes, and that's carried on through.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Half of those that were surveyed said that vaping was
harming their health. Does that mean the other half thing
it's fine?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, So when we run the survey, we get obviously
a lot of anecdotal evidence from how people feel about
their vaping, and that certainly came through that it was
impacting their house. Especially these older students. They talk about
things like how it affects their sports, they're finding their
out of breath when they been vaping, and of course

(03:01):
some of them are actually waiting in the middle of
the night to vape as well, which is of huge concern.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
That's not good. So what do you want to do
about it. One of the things is to increase the
age to twenty one.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, there's several recommendations, and slowly, I guess, I think
with new you know, we have slowly done this piecemeal
approach to regulations over the years, but unfortunately it has
been just that it's coming in with reducing the nixteen content,
which have been pushing for to be in line with
the EU at twenty milligrams. And that's across the disposable
vapes and of course refillable vapes increasing the age, but

(03:37):
also the advertising being able to see these products from
the front store window or going into general retailers and
seeing these products. That hope is going to change next
year with the new amendments to to the smoke free
and REGAAR products built and obviously we've submitted into that
and we're hoping to see that actually come to fruition
the next year because that advertising would have a big impact. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Absolutely, all right to Tensha, thank you very much for
your time this morning. La Tensha Harding, Esthma and Rich
Respiratory Foundation, New Zealand chief executive. With new numbers out
this morning on vaping, twenty six percent of kids of
older teenagers vaping. That's not great, is it. I think
there's more teenagers vaping today than ever smoked, which I

(04:21):
suppose it's what they tell us. It's a bit healthier
than smoking, so I guess that might make sense, and
it's not as much older and you know you don't
smell when you kiss each other, et cetera. But it's
not great, is it.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
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