Headmaster concerned by vaping shop near school
QUEENSTOWN
THE company behind a national vaping products retailer setting up shop a stone’s throw from Wakatipu High School is reassuring parents its policy on school pupils is ‘‘very strict’’.
Wakatipu High principal Steve Hall has requested a meeting with the owner of Shosha, a store owned by Mason Corporation Ltd, which is due to open a store on the ground floor of the Wyndham Garden hotel building on November 23.
Mr Hall had concerns about the store’s proximity to the high school and had agreed with its owner — who did not live in Queenstown — to meet before it opens.
Under a new vaping law that came into effect on Wednesday, it is illegal to sell vaping products to anyone under 18.
It bans the advertising of vaping products, and restricts the sale of a full range of flavours to specialist vaping stores. Dairies, supermarkets and petrol stations will be limited to mint or menthol.
Mr Hall said he wanted to understand the shop’s policies and ‘‘bring to the meeting anything we can do to help it work as well as it can’’.
‘‘From a brief conversation I’ve had with this gentleman, they don’t allow anyone with a school uniform into their stores, but I have to have a meeting with the guy to understand that definitively,’’ the headmaster said.
Vaping was ‘‘not an uncommon thing’’ among teenagers, and the Ministry of Education had just issued guidance, so ‘‘by a point next year, school sites have to be vapefree, like they have to be smokefree.’’
He noted Shosha sold online and schools could only control what happened on their grounds.
Mason Corporation operations manager Nabhik Gupta said the company refused to serve anyone in a school uniform and their employee rules said that any pupil in uniform, even if over 18, ‘‘will not be served and must leave the store immediately’’.