RISE AND RISE OF VAPE SHOPS

Vape shops are popping up all over the country, and in the unlikeliest of places. There is an emerging market outside of cigarette smokers that is proving lucrative for retailers. reports.

For university researcher Kelly Burrowes, the unknown is just as worrying as what is known about the effects of inhaling toxic substances.

Cigarettes kill 8 million people worldwide each year. But when it comes to vapes or e-liquids, the industry is so new that there is not enough evidence to know their effects.

Vaping rates are increasing faster than smoking rates are declining, meaning overall nicotine use in New Zealand is on the rise. More people are taking up vaping than quitting cigarettes.

Burrowes says the explosion of new vape shops is increasingly alarming. And the University of Auckland associate professor of chemical and materials engineering says the most concerning part is they are popping up in the poorest and most vulnerable areas.

‘‘Vaping has become too easily accessible and widespread,’’ she says. ‘‘The more deprived parts of Auckland seem to have more vape stores, sometimes three or more vape stores in one block of shops.’’

The saddest part, she says, is there is clearly demand for these stores as more and more open. ‘‘There is that much demand for them and obviously there is money to be made from people selling these products. It’s a commercial interest, but I definitely don’t think it’s in the interest of people’s health.’’

About 350,000 New Zealanders are believed to vape, according to Action for Smokefree (ASH), and the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation has found one-in-five teens have used an e-cigarette daily.

Almost 120,000 Kiwis aged between 15 and 24 are said to vape daily.

Burrowes believes the Government’s efforts to make the country smokefree by 2025 is working to encourage smokers to swap cigarettes for vapes but at the same time fuelling a surge in usage by young New Zealanders and firsttime vapers.

‘‘The balance at the moment is too much in favour of younger people being able to vape. It is so easily accessible, there are disposables which are only $10 per vape, there are all the flavours that seem yummy,’’ says Burrowes.

‘‘We could be banning those single-use disposable vapes, getting rid of nearly all the flavours. And not letting all these new vape stores open. I don’t see why we need those for people switching smoking; all it is doing is normalising vaping.’’

Vaping crackdown

It is understood the Government is set to make an announcement to introduce new powers to better regulate the market.

In Australia, you won’t find a single vape store in the shopping mall. For the most part it is banned, with vape devices only available to smokers through a prescription from a doctor.

Sales of single-use vapes are prohibited and there are restricted flavours, no coloured packaging allowed and regulated ingredient lists.

Burrowes says this could be a way New Zealand combats this growing social issue, but says with the country’s hugely stretched healthcare system, implementing prescription-only use would likely not work.

In the US, individual state governments are beginning to scrap flavoured e-liquids, only permitting tobacco and menthol flavours to make them less appealing to youth and younger user groups.

Regulation was introduced in New Zealand in August 2021, banning dairies and petrol stations from stocking a full range of vape flavours.

Ben Youdan, director of Action for Smokefree 2025, believes the vape market needs more regulation to ensure vapes are not getting in the hands of youth. But he says following the model of Australia could do more harm than good.

‘‘There has been an explosion of shops and saturation especially in high smoking areas. We’d like to see more clarity from the regulators on where shops can operate and how they promote vapes in the community.

‘‘However, we don’t see the Australian model as useful, in fact it is potentially harmful as it essentially bans the least harmful product whilst leaving cigarettes everywhere. Australia already has a major illicit vape problem, and their new approach only entrenches this further, whilst leaving cigarettes as the dominant form of nicotine,’’ Youdan says.

‘‘Australia has had similar increases in youth use as NZ, and much worse shifting from smoking to vapes by adults. What we have here that Australia lacks is a largely legitimate market and a regulatory framework to manage it.’’

Burrowes’ research looking at the health effects of vaping on the lungs and respiratory system shows the short-term effects of vaping are concerning but the long-term effects remain unknown.

Vaping triggers inflammation within the body and is extremely harmful for the cardiovascular system, she says, causing an increase in heart rate and blood pressure that leads to a ‘‘remodelling of the blood vessels’’, making them stiffer, which could be linked to an increase in heart attacks and strokes.

She believes the true effect of vaping will not be known for at least another 20 years.

In the US in 2019 and 2020 there were almost 3000 hospitalisations and 70 deaths linked to one chemical found in THC-containing e-liquids and a chemical called Vitamin E Acetate, causing fatal lung injuries. A string of deaths linked to vaping have also been reported in Australia.

Burrowes says it is hard to determine if vaping is less harmful than smoking cigarettes, but says vapes tend to have some of the same ingredients as cigarettes, such as heavy metals, but generally fewer of them.

‘‘We’re all hoping that they are safer than smoking; that is purely based on the fact that they have less harmful chemicals. Smoking has about 7000 different chemicals with lots of them known carcinogens, vaping might have a couple of hundred chemicals; some of them carcinogens.

‘‘I definitely think the number of vape shops popping up is because we’re getting a whole new population of people addicted to nicotine – and they are going to find it hard to give up. The younger you start, the harder it is to quit,’’ says Burrowes.

Calls for better regulation

Retail expert Juanita Neville-Te Rito, managing director of RX Group, says the lack of regulation in the vape market is creating a booming business for vape retailers.

Neville-Te Rito says the traditional retail and commercial environment is getting bogged down with too many vape shops often in one place or shopping strip – and despite vape shops catering for those 18-plus, the greater visibility and accessibility makes them more likely to end up in the hands of youth.

‘‘In good retailing you are looking for win-win outcomes, where you give back to the community, recruit and employ people, and generally everyone gets a win, and I struggle [to see that with vape shops]. To me it is opportunistic retailing until there is regulation.’’

Neville-Te Rito wants to see the industry regulated similarly to liquor shops.

She says vape shops add nothing to the overall retail experience and often bring down the standard of shopping areas.

‘‘Nine times out of 10 they are an abomination. They are a couple of racks and sweet smurf juice; who knows where it comes from, and a line out the door of people who fill their lungs with crap.

‘‘The explosion in stores is really akin to the explosion in liquor stores with no regulation around where they are, what purpose do they serve, what is it doing to our community.’’

Neville-Te Rito finds it hard to comprehend the lack of regulation for the market given the country’s smokefree status, and the ban on smoking in indoor workplaces.

In July, laws will come into effect that reduce the number of stores legally allowed to sell cigarettes to a tenth of existing levels, from 6000 to just 600 nationwide.

Neville-Te Rito is concerned this

could spur a further rise in vape usage.

Data released in November 2022 showed the number of people smoking daily had fallen to 8% – down from 9.4% in 2021, the lowest rate since records began. But at the end of last year 8.3% of adults were vaping daily, up from 6.2% in the previous year.

‘‘By allowing vape stores to pop up on any corner . . . there is this real belief that it is OK,’’ Neville-Te Rito says.

‘‘We’re allowing the next generation to start something harmful and repeating the mistakes of our past.’’

Nabhik Gupta, operations manager at Shosha, one of the country’s largest vape store chains, says vape shops open where there is demand.

He says it is ethical to open stores in lower socioeconomic areas, because that is where the data shows there is the most demand. He says they are open only to help smokers make the switch to vapes, which he says are 95% less harmful than cigarettes.

Shosha, which has 122 stores up and down the country, with a foot in almost every major town and city, has experienced rapid expansion in the past three years. The business was established in 2012 and experienced fast growth since the end of 2019. This accelerated post-Covid lockdown.

In the past six months alone it has opened eight new stores and has another six set to open by the end of the year.

Gupta says the vape market is growing fast. But specialised vape stores did not like dairies and corner shops promoting disposable vapes.

He says responsible speciality vape stores get a bad wrap due to the rise of disposable vapes.

‘‘We do sell disposable vapes in our stores, but we don’t favour these ... these are not environmentally friendly at all and have become an attraction point for the youth.’’

Gupta says he would like to see disposable vapes banned and regulation introduced – but not to follow the lead of Australia to make vapes only available by prescription.

‘‘Youth shouldn’t have access to vapes at all. All specialist retailers are for over 18-year-olds, so how the youth get the vapes is the question that everyone should be asking. How are they getting access to vapes?

‘‘If the Government banned disposable vapes – a complete blank ban – that would solve 90% of the problem,’’ he says.

The dairy-vape shop ‘loophole’

Dairies are only allowed to sell a limited number of vape products; tobacco, mint or menthol flavours. But to get around this and in response to a growing wider market, dairy owners have been operating a workaround – the dairies with two entrances and a small space dedicated to vaping products.

‘‘There’s obviously enough money [there] for them to keep doing that,’’ Burrowes says.

‘‘There is probably a very responsible, commercial viable retail business to be had [in the market], but it needs rules and regulations that protect good operators to deliver something that is right for the market – not a land of cowboys doing whatever they want to do.’’

Sunny Kaushal, chair of the Dairy and Business Owners Association, says hybrid dairy-vape shops are the result of ‘‘poor policy decisions’’ by the Government.

‘‘If dairies had been able to sell the three regulated flavours of e-cigs and smokeless tobacco plus three approved flavours, then we would not be seeing so many specialist vape retailers.

‘‘It’s crazy that a dairy owner breaks the law if they suggest to someone asking for a pack of Rothmans that they should try a vape,’’ Kaushal says.

According to the Vaping Regulatory Authority, there are 1280 specialist vape retailers operating throughout the country.

Kaushal says dairy owners are ‘‘highly compliant sellers’’ and official data from Te Whatu Ora Health NZ confirms that in their overt and covert ‘‘controlled purchase operations’’.

He says shops are compliant with the rules and vapes are likely to be getting in the hands of youth through illegal supply linked to ramraids and burglaries.

‘‘Yes, 119,000 15-24 Kiwis vape daily but poor policy, like Australia’s, risks making it ‘forbidden’ fruit. If bans worked, why then do they have a bigger problem than here?

‘‘NZ has a great story on vaping – 154,000 Kiwis have quit smoking in just the past two years and our daily smoking rate is 21% below that of Australia.’’

Cigarette-free or smokefree?

Experts say the boom in vape shop openings has come as an indirect result of the Government trying to stamp out cigarette smoking. But is the country any better off healthwise? And is the country really smokefree while vapes are around?

The general consensus seems to be no. Neville-Te Rito says if the purpose of vaping was to get smokers off cigarettes then it needed to be treated as a medicinal product and handled in a pharmaceutical environment.

‘‘When you give people easy access to a product that could have societal health harm, there’s got to be controls around it, whether it’s from the way you distribute the product and the commercial environment through to how there are controls around regulation.

‘‘By any Tom, Dick and Harry opening something up on a corner, it is not building the right type of ecosystem for a product that might be in demand, but by the right people.’’

The country has introduced a steadily rising smoking age to stop those aged 14 and under from ever being able to legally buy cigarettes in what is considered world-first legislation to outlaw smoking for the next generation.

Health Minister Ayesha Verrall was contacted for comment.

‘‘The explosion in stores is really akin to the explosion in liquor stores with no regulation around where they are, what purpose do they serve, what is it doing to our community.’’ Juanita Neville-Te Rito retail expert