Almost one in five students at Waimea College say they have vaped, and the majority have no idea how much nicotine is in the vapes they have used.
Principal Scott Haines says there were zero cases of vaping when he joined the school eight years ago and now it is an increasing issue to the point where nearly a fifth of the students have vaped.
The Government is introducing new rules to make vaping less appealing to youth, but he says they do not go far enough.
The new rules will stop new specialist vape shops opening near schools, cutting down on disposable vapes and restricting the use of names that appeal to youth in preference for generic flavour descriptions.
“It’s a step in the right direction but at the end of the day these products are highly available for students now,” Scott says.
“Secondary school students and even primary school students have ready access to the stuff, and it would appear to me it has been deliberately marketed at youth by having names like ‘strawberry pie’ and ‘cotton candy’ and all those flavours that appeal to youth.”
Scott says he is passionate about the vaping issue among students with so many of them now inhaling a product that can have very high levels of nicotine.
In a survey commissioned by the Ministry of Health, 19 per cent of Waimea College students reported vaping compared with the national average of 24 per cent, whereas just 3.1 per cent reported smoking.
The school has carried out its own survey where 17 per cent of students reported they had used a vape in the previous seven days and two per cent had smoked.
Ninety-six per cent did not take up vaping to quit smoking.
Scott says the majority of students reported they had no idea what percentage of nicotine was in the vape they were using.
“Smoking is declining year after year and vaping is increasing. In seeking to solve a problem by moving people from smoking to vaping, we’ve actually created a whole other class of addiction for people who weren’t smoking before - 96 per cent of our vapers were not smokers before.”
He says staff remove vapes from students with “reasonable regularity” and those students caught vaping go through an educative process first to look at their habit from a health perspective. If that fails, they face disciplinary consequences.
“But we understand it’s primarily a health issue.”
Detecting students vaping is about to get harder with the new zero vapes, he says.
Zero vapes do not emit vape clouds which, he says, makes it impossible for staff to monitor.
Last year the school engaged the then District Health Board’s health promoter to run a campaign on vaping to understand the problem and support students to kick their habit.
Scott says the DHB had funding to support people to stop alcohol, drug and tobacco use, but no funding at all to support anyone to stop vaping.
As vaping increases, the former Made for Men clothing store in Richmond is being redeveloped as a new vape shop.
