New Zealand Asthma Group Falsely Accuses E-cigarettes of Epidemic

Nancy Loucas, the executive coordinator of the Asia-Pacific Advocates for Tobacco Harm Reduction Alliance (CAPHRA), has stated that "by inflaming anti-vaping sentiments, the New Zealand Asthma and Respiratory Foundation will only cause more underage individuals to revert to smoking and negatively impact the country's 2025 smoke-free goal that has been in place for a decade.

Loucas made the comment following the release of a video series titled "Focus on e-cigarettes" by the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation NZ (ARFNZ).

The movement claims that New Zealand is experiencing a "youth vaping epidemic". It also states, along with the Secondary Principals' Association of New Zealand (SPANZ), that over a quarter of students have vaped in the past week.

Loucas stated that "these alarming numbers fail to consider that if 26% of high school students did try vaping in the past week, many may have only experimented and furthermore, almost all of them will smoke deadly cigarettes a generation ago.

According to CAPHRA, while smoking-related illnesses cause approximately 5,000 deaths per year among New Zealanders, no deaths have been attributed to e-cigarettes in the country. In fact, e-cigarettes are widely regarded as a positive factor in the steep decline of smoking rates in New Zealand. The overall smoking rate among adults has dropped from 18% in 2006/07 to 9.4% in 2020-2021.

What ARFNZ failed to mention is that they selectively referred to the 2021 ASH tenth year snapshot survey which confirms that e-cigarettes do not attract non-smokers. In that survey, only 3% of daily e-cigarette users had never smoked before. Additionally, while many may try them, very few become regular e-cigarette users, particularly among non-smoking students," she said.

According to Loucas, although ARFNZ has attracted headline news with its claims about the "youth e-cigarette epidemic," researchers at the University of Auckland came to a different conclusion in 2020: "Our findings do not support the idea of an e-cigarette epidemic in New Zealand or a large dependence of young people on e-cigarettes," the researchers wrote.

While nobody hopes for young people to be using e-cigarettes, we have not seen any evidence presented by ARFNZ to support their claim of an "epidemic.

来源：烟草记者