Associate Health Minister Casey Costello has announced the Government will be supplying free vaping kits to stop smoking providers but has failed to disclose any details of how the Government is funding these unapproved nicotine delivery devices.

“Considering the Government has been so focused on cost cutting, employing measures such as disestablishing the jobs of quit smoking counsellors and cutting hundreds of other health staff, if money has now been miraculously found to pay the tobacco and vape industry for their highly addictive products it would be yet more evidence of Costello working in the interests of industry rather than doing her job as a health minister.

It also appears no official tender process has been followed to procure vapes.

“Are we seeing the results of more secretive dodgy backroom deals being made away from any public scrutiny between the Government and tobacco and vaping companies? asks Charyl Robinson co-founder of Vape-Free Kids New Zealand.

Some stop smoking services have previously provided vaping products to help people quit smoking, however this has always been a legal grey area. Vapes are considered by the Ministry of Health as recreational products not medicines.

No vaping product has been approved by MEDSAFE. None are classified as medicines or medical devices under the Medicines Act 1981 and therefore cannot be recommended as a smoking cessation tool.

Unlike vapes, products such as nicotine replacement patches, lozenges and gums which have been approved by MEDSAFE can be recommended or prescribed.

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“The Government seems to have found a way to ignore the Medicines Act and should at least front up about which products they have procured, what the nicotine levels of these products are, who they are sourcing them from and the process that took place for whoever that is to become the vape supplier for this Te Whatu Ora programme.

“Additionally it would be good to know if the Government has a plan on how people who become addicted to vaping will be supported to quit their vape addiction? And have any clinical guidelines been issued to stop smoking providers around the use of unapproved devices to quit smoking?

“Most importantly Vape-Free Kids NZ would like to know if any safeguards are being put in place to stop these free vapes getting into the hands of children.

“We thought this kind of behaviour would be left behind in 2024 and Christopher Luxon’s Government who gave a $216 million tax break to big tobacco would stop working in the interests of the very companies that are desperate to addict as many new customers to nicotine as possible.

“Yet here we are on the first day of 2025 and the Government is announcing how they are teaming up with the very industry responsible for so much addiction and harm.”

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