Critic And Conscience Of Society Award Winner Highlights Vaping Threat To Health Of Young New Zealanders | Scoop News – Scoop

Tuesday, 3 May 2022, 12:31 pmPress Release: Universities New Zealand - Te Pokai Tara

Regulatory loopholes are contributing to increases in thenumber of young New Zealanders exposed to nicotine throughvaping, warns the winner of the 2022 Critic and Conscienceof Society Award.

Janet Hoek is aProfessor of Public Health at the University of Otago,Wellington, and co-director of the universitys ASPIRE2025 Research Centre, which conducts research to support theGovernments smokefree 2025 goal.

She is the latestwinner of a $50,000 grant from philanthropic trust The GamaFoundation in recognition of fulfilling her role under theEducation and Training Act 2020, which requires universityacademics to act as the critic and conscience ofsociety.

The award, administered by Universities NewZealand Te Pkai Tara, is given each year to anacademic who, in the opinion of a panel of three independentjudges, has done more in the past two calendar years thanany other applicant to provide the public with independentexpert commentary on an issue or issues affecting theAotearoa New Zealand community or futuregenerations.

Previous winners have been ProfessorAlexander Gillespie and Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles(2021), Professor Michael Baker and Associate ProfessorAnita Gibbs (2020), Professor Andrew Geddis (2019),Professor Ann Brower (2018) and Dr Mike Joy(2017).

For more than 20 years, Professor Hoek hasresearched how policy measures could more effectively reducethe appeal, availability and accessibility of tobaccoproducts.

She has shared her findings in more than 250conference presentations and more than 200 peer-reviewedacademic articles, as well as in blogs and through extensivemedia activity.

She also works with community andadvocacy groups and NGOs, and has led several studies thatcontributed to New Zealands Smokefree Action Planreleased in 2021.

Submissions based on ProfessorHoeks findings have informed national and internationaltobacco legislation, including New Zealands SmokefreeEnvironments and Regulated Products Amendment Act 2020(SERPA), for which she documented aggressive vapeproduct marketing that targeted young people.

Since2020, Professor Hoek has identified loopholes that leaveyoung people vulnerable to continued vape productmarketing.

The most recent New Zealand Health Surveyshows that vaping at least monthly among young people aged15 to 17 more than tripled between 2018/19 and 2020/21,rising from 3.5% to 12.3%, and daily use increased from 1.7%to 5.8%.

The same patterns are evident among thoseaged 18 to 24, with monthly use rising from 8.8% to 21.1%and daily use from 4.5% to 15.3%. The 2021 ASH Year 10survey findings show daily vaping among those aged 14 to 15more than tripled in two years, from 3.1% in 2019 to 9.6% in2021.

These large increases show vaping issupplementing, not displacing, smoking and many more youngpeople have become dependent on nicotine, says ProfessorHoek.

She says more regulation is needed to combatsocial media marketing that not only targets young peoplebut provides incentives for them to create and share contentand refer friends for promotional offers.

We need abetter balance between supporting people who smoke to switchto a less harmful alternative while also protecting youngpeople from products that do not support theirwellbeing.

Professor Hoek also highlights how smallconvenience stores are sub-dividing their premises to createspecialist vape retail outlets. This tactic circumventsSERPA, which imposed flavour restrictions on the stores andallowed them to sell only tobacco, menthol and mintflavoured e-liquids.

Specialist vape stores maysell all flavours. By reinventing themselves as bothconvenience stores and specialist vape outlets, dairies areensuring diverse, youth-oriented flavours such asbubble-gum, cookies & cream anddragons milk remain in the heart of familyneighbourhoods, says Professor Hoek.

She would liketo see vaping products removed from small convenience storesso they are sold only by retailers that can offer cessationadvice and are not frequented by young people in the waydairies are.

Commenting on its selection of ProfessorHoek as winner of the 2022 Critic and Conscience of SocietyAward, The Gama Foundations Grant Nelson praised hersteadfast long-term commitment to gathering thebest-possible evidence around tobacco products and thenusing it to inform public and policymaker understanding of amajor public health issue.

Professor Hoek welcomed theaward, saying: Its an enormous honour to receive thisaward, which recognises a core role academics are privilegedto have but that can be challenging to perform. I see theaward as recognition of the ASPIRE 2025 Research Centreswork, which has made major contributions to tobacco controlpolicy in Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond. We are verygrateful for this generous grant, which will help usstrengthen our community connections and ensure our researchcontinues to have real-world implications.

Thismedia release is also available on the Universities NewZealand website for sharing digitally: https://www.universitiesnz.ac.nz/latest-news-and-publications/critic-and-conscience-society-award-winner-highlights-vaping-threat

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Critic And Conscience Of Society Award Winner Highlights Vaping Threat To Health Of Young New Zealanders | Scoop News - Scoop