Investment up in SMOKE?
Frustrated vaping companies say they have failed to get through to the Government, writes Rob Stock.
He sold his family home to fund a hi-tech factory in Silverdale to make vaping e-liquids for use in e-cigarettes. QJ Satchell is a true believer in the potential for vaping to sweep away many of the social ills caused by cigarette smoking.
Vaping would be better for the health of New Zealand’s roughly 500,000 cigarette smoking nicotine addicts, he said, and would save them a small fortune too.
The industry yearns for legitimacy but four years of lobbying to be regulated has failed to win it.
‘‘Without legislation we do not know how secure that investment is,’’ Satchell says of the money he has invested. Bank loans are hard to get in industries with high levels of regulatory uncertainty, he said.
‘‘Our business plan has always had to be short-term because we don’t know what is happening.’’
Until the Government releases draft legislation, the threat remains of a ban on all vape advertising, of sales being limited to pharmacies, of a ban on fruity e-liquid flavours, and of a ban on e-liquids with higher
concentrations of nicotine.
The first draft of regulations was to be released in August 2018. Then it was to be August 2019. Now, Associate Health Minister Jenny Salesa, who declined to be interviewed, said only that the Government would be making a statement shortly.
‘‘We hope they can get it done this term,’’ Satchell said, but he does not believe it because there are so few sitting days in Parliament before the next general election in September.
‘‘It just keeps getting pushed out and pushed out,’’ he said.
‘‘I don’t think they have any idea what they are doing.’’
The industry has struggled with the messages coming out of the Government, with Salesa saying in September last year that e-liquid flavours, except tobacco, menthol and mint, could be banned to prevent vaping from being attractive to children and young people.
‘‘That really showed how little Jenny Salesa actually knew about the industry,’’ Satchell said.
Smokers switching to vaping typically start with tobaccoflavoured e-liquids, he said, but quickly switch to non-tobacco flavours.
Jonathan Devery, co-owner of e-liquid maker Vapo and spokesman for the Vaping Trade Association, said the vaping industry had grown to about $200 million in revenue per year, and 90 per cent of e-liquid sales were for non-tobacco flavours.
‘‘Quitting cigarettes is really hard. We need to ensure the vaping experience for the consumer is really good,’’ Devery said. ‘‘Quite frankly, tobacco tastes horrible.’’
More recently, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern signalled the Government now understood more about the importance of flavours.
Fears the country is being swept by an epidemic of youth vaping have reduced. The vaping industry opposes regulating vaping more harshly than tobacco, including limiting the concentration of e-liquids so they deliver nicotine hits below those delivered by cigarettes.
It also wants to be allowed pointof-sale advertising, and controlled advertising on radio and TV in later evening slots. There are currently no advertising limits. ‘‘I can’t really think of an industry that has been so keen for regulation. Normally industries shy away from it because they fear it will limit their bottom lines,’’ Devery said.
The industry believes part of the delay is due to party politics, with the Government ditching a National Party draft bill regulating vaping when it came to power.
ACT leader David Seymour said Labour had shown ‘‘staggering incompetence on vaping legislation’’. ‘‘Back in November 2018 – 443 days ago – New Zealanders were told the Government intended to regulate vaping. Despite multiple promises, we have seen nothing,’’ he said earlier this month.
There was not even a law banning the sale of vapes to under 18s, though the vaping industry had tried to get all vaping suppliers locally to pledge not to sell to under 18s. ‘‘If it is true that large numbers of children are vaping, the first act of the Government when Parliament resumes must be to introduce legislation banning the sale of vaping devices and nicotine e-liquids to under 18s,’’ Seymour said.
Seymour said a total ban on vaping flavours and advertising was ‘‘the worst imaginable outcome’’.
‘‘Punishing tobacco taxes have not brought down smoking rates but the market has delivered a safe, innovative solution for smokers wanting to quit,’’ he said.
Safe is not how public health experts see vaping.
Kelly Burrowes, senior research fellow at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, said the advertising she had seen and heard indicated the industry was trying to make vaping appear cool, bringing echoes of tobacco marketing before it was banned.
While medical consensus is that e-cigarettes are less harmful than tobacco smoking, there was increasing evidence e-cigarettes were not safe, Burrowes said.
The long-term health impacts of vaping were not understood, she said. One recent study found mice developed lung cancer when exposed to nicotine laced vapour in quantities similar to people who vaped for three to six years.
There was rising awareness that people who take up vaping, and cut down but do not stop smoking, were getting the worst of both worlds, Burrowes said.
‘‘It could well be that there is a new disease that comes from it. We will not know for quite a while.’’
Vaping had only been effectively available in New Zealand since 2006 and technically not illegal since Philip Morris won a court case against the Ministry of Health in 2016, Burrowes said.
‘‘I don’t think they have any idea what they are doing.’’
QJ Satchell
Vaping e-liquids factory owner