New Zealand continues to show leadership in tobacco harm reduction with the new Vape to Quit campaign to go live on 13 October 2019. The government campaign will encourage smokers to quit with vaping on TV, radio and digital channels.

The campaign will feature videos of support and positivity filmed with real people encouraging someone close to them to quit smoking with vaping.

Activities will centre around the Vaping Facts website which has been live for 3 months so far.

A new vaping facts brochure will contain the essential key messages around vaping for those who arse quitting and encourages people to seek additional information from Vaping Facts.

The campaign makes it very clear that vaping is not risk-free and is only recommended for smokers. Non-smokers should not start vaping.

The New Zealand campaign is a wake-up call to Australia. The evidence now supports vaping as a legitimate quitting aid for smokers.

Smoking and vaping in NZ

According to the 2017/18 New Zealand Health Survey 14.9% of NZ adults are current smokers including 33% of Maori adults.

Adults living in the most socio-economically deprived areas are three times as likely to be current smokers as people living in the least deprived areas.

Currently 3.8% of New Zealand adults vape and 2.6% vape daily.

In Australia, only 1.2% of adults currently vape.

Posted by Colin Mendelsohn, colin@athra.org.au

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