New Zealand: Luminaries in Harm Reduction

As a new year begins taking shape, New Zealand has taken a drastic measure in achieving their goal of becoming a smoke-free country - they’re offering free vaping starter kits to help adults quit cigarettes. Effective this week, national smoke free resources will offer these kits to responsible adults who are attempting to stop smoking. 

New Zealand’s Associate Health Minister, Casey Costello states "Vaping has played a key role in reducing smoking rates and the government supports adults switching to vaping because vaping is far less harmful than smoking cigarettes.” Since vaping has achieved mainstream adoption in the past decade or so, numerous studies have linked nicotine vaporizer usage with reduced or terminated cigarette smoking.  

While there are certainly skeptics, the director of NZ’s Action for Smokefree 2025 program, Ben Youdan tells Radio New Zealand “There's absolutely no doubt that vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking cigarettes.” To detractors, “"It's not completely harm-free, but if you're a smoker and you switch to vaping, you can massively reduce the risk of getting sick and risk of dying as a consequence of tobacco use." 

All over the world, tobacco use is declining to record lows. As of 2022, one in five adults use tobacco products, compared to one in three in 2000, according to the World Health Organization. Tremendous progress is being made toward a future without smoking, and the vapers of the world generally all wish to see that day. Even England’s National Health Service supports the concept of using vapes to quit smoking. All evidence points to one fact, vaping is not proliferating the use of tobacco or nicotine, it is reducing it. Governments around the world are acknowledging the relative safety of this method of nicotine consumption.

The United States, meanwhile, continues to demonize vaping, allowing false narratives about the impact on public health to proliferate. It seems other developed countries are taking a permissive stance, while U.S. legislators continue to waste time debating minutiae, like whether to ban flavors. A preponderance of evidence shows that adults use flavors to help them successfully quit smoking, and youth vape usage is on a steep decline. Perhaps it’s time to rethink our stance on electronic cigarettes.