The number of year 10 students who vape regularly has “significantly” decreased, according to a new survey.
The survey conducted by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), shows the number of year 10s picking up the habit has dropped by almost 2% from 18.2% in 2022 to 16.4% this year.
It also revealed youth daily vaping rates have plateaued at 10%, with the number who have tried vaping dropping from 40.1% last year to 37.5% in 2023.
ASH has called the results “encouraging” but said New Zealand still needs to do better.
“Aotearoa was very slow to regulate vaping, and we saw a rapid rise in youth use in the years up until 2021, but then we finally had some legislation put in place,” director Ben Youdan said.
However, the campaign group ASH is warning against complacency, with vaping still prevalent among some groups. (Source: 1News)
“Two years later, whilst the rate of youth use is still too high, it is good to see that fewer young people are vaping and experimenting with vapes.”
However, ASH is “pleased” with the results around smoking, which found only 1.2% of those surveyed smoke cigarettes daily.
The number of those who have never tried a cigarette has also increased, hitting 87.8% from 85.8% last year. ASH called this “reassuring”.
“Young people are clearly rejecting tobacco, and these trends are echoed in the smoking data for young adults who have seen some of the biggest declines in smoking across the motu in recent years,” Youdan said.
The number of Māori who have never smoked increased to 77.7%, an increase of 4%.
ASH was also “delighted” to see 76.8% of Māori girls had never smoked.
But it said concerning news was that Māori girls vaped 2.5 times more than the average rate among their peers.
ASH board member and head of the Māori SUDI prevention service, Fay Selby-Law, said: “Although vapes appear to be helping many adults stop smoking, we still need to be doing much more to keep them out of the hands of young people.”
ASH also wants to see “urgent work” to stop Pacific teens getting hooked on vaping – as rates among the demographic slowly rise.
“It really reinforces why there is still a huge need for Pasifika-led approaches that understand and work with our diverse communities on keeping youth smoking low and reversing the rise of teen vaping,” ASH board member Sir Collin Tukuitonga said.
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