Vaping regulation team cut

A former senior Health Ministry staffer is warning vape sales to children may rise as they say the number of people charged with making sure retailers comply with laws shrinks from 22 staff to about seven.

“The Government’s trying to say on one hand, we want to get tougher with ensuring everyone’s following the law, but then they're getting rid of vaping staff and compliance staff,” said the former staffer, who worked in the compliance team until earlier this year.

They said there were 22 people in the regulated products team at the end of last year, but said cuts began in December after the coalition Government was formed. By August there could be just seven staff left as contracts will have ended and people are not replaced, they claimed. Two other compliance staff have contracts that end in June, they said.

“I think you’ll see a lot more non-compliance kick off and a lot less illegal behaviour being identified, caught, followed up on,“said the former staffer, who The Press agreed not toname.

The ministry said five roles “specifically created to administer parts of the tobacco regulatory” may be disestablished following repeal of smoking laws, and as part of the ministry’s plan to slash staff numbers by 25% – a net loss of 134 roles.

Both the ministry and Associate Health Minister Casey Costello have refused to comment on cuts outside of this process, but say the proposed cuts of five full-time staff would come from a team of 13 fulltimers.

It’s understood one of the roles proposed to be disestablished is the person in charge of the Vaping Regulatory Authority, but the ministry denied this. “The change proposal does not include any changes to staff in the regulated products team employed in compliance or other regulatory roles,” Dr Andrew Old, deputy-director of health at the Public Health Agency, said.

Costello argued enforcement work was the role of Health NZ, which had 39 designated smokefree enforcement officers, and it was recruiting for a further 16. “These are the people who do things like ensure under-18s can’t buy cigarettes or vapes.”

However, the ministry is responsible for online compliance and prosecution under the smokefree legislation – something Costello did not initially seem to understand. Asked to clarify, Costello’s office said the ministry told her no roles in online compliance were affected by the latest round of cuts, but did not comment on staffing changes outside this.

She said Government would “strengthen the regulatory, compliance and enforcement regime around vaping and tobacco sales”.

“... I’ve asked the Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand for a greater focus on compliance and for regular reporting on enforcement activity.”

In four and a half years just one prosecution has been brought. That was against Christchurch dairy owner Xiaoming He of JDs Dairy.