A GRAPE-FLAVOURED FAÇADE

Words by Molly Duval (she/her)

Addiction is a good business to be in. 

I know this because in Year 9 Business Studies, we were taught the basic tenet of capitalism: Businesses make products that consumers want, we buy them, they make money, and everybody wins. It sounded fair enough: I got a Zombie Chew, they got my 50c, and the world kept spinning. 

What I didn’t understand, however, was just how corrupt that money could be. We didn't learn that the key to a 'miracle' sales strategy was to create a product that customers literally could not refuse. Funnily enough, my classmates and I were about to learn that lesson. 

The first e-cigarette was made in 2003—by a three-pack-a-day smoker. It was made, with genuine intention, as a tool to help smokers. It was designed as a less harmful nicotine fix for people looking to quit. 

It was hailed as a miracle. Smoking tobacco is one of the leading causes of premature death, with 5,000 people dying each year in Aotearoa alone. Now, the physical and psychological torment associated with nicotine withdrawals could be eased, and quitting smoking could be far easier. For smokers, it really was a gift—with the health risks associated with vaping far fewer than smoking, and without the 70% tax and GST the government puts on tobacco purchases, it was far, far cheaper. 

In the decades since, this earnest invention has taken on a life of its own. The vaping industry has been likened to Silicon Valley in its approach—growing as fast as possible and worrying about the consequences later. The technology has evolved from basic e-cigarettes to bulky light-up mods, to the modern (and most widely loved) fourth generation: sleek, discreet Caliburns. The iPhone of nicotine addiction.

In its early days, Aotearoa’s vaping industry had, comparatively, very little government regulation surrounding it. There was no nicotine concentration limit and little regulation on the ingredients allowed in vape juices. For context, the nicotine concentration limit of the European Union is 20mg/ml. The advertising, marketing, and packaging of these products were widely unrestricted and the industry was left to effectively self-monitor who they were selling vapes to. I shit you not—a ban on selling vapes to under-18-year-olds was only implemented in November 2020. 

It is, in a way, understandable why our government took such a soft approach in regulating this industry. In light of our SmokeFree 2025 goal, making a quit-smoking tool more difficult to access seems counter-intuitive. Alongside this, the voice of the vaping industry is loud, with many producers stating that their industry's noble cause is to end the social harms of smoking tobacco.  

It was at this point in the industry's evolution that I, a 14-year-old at the time, first got my hands on a vape. A friend had told me that I could order it online and it would come—no I.D checks, no verification—I just had to check a box on the website saying that I was over 18. 

Easy. 

It was an alt. Pod, Grape, 40mg. It tasted like gum and I had my first ever head spin. It felt like a scientific achievement—everyone could finally have harmless nicotine addictions, or at least, that's what it said when we Googled it. A miracle! 

Slowly, myself, my friends and the majority of the people we knew got their own and got addicted. When I reflect on it now, I can't decide whether it was funny or tragic how easily it happened. By Year 12, it seemed like all of my socialising occurred in a thick cloud of artificially flavoured vapour. In the bathrooms at morning tea, lunch, during maths class, on the way to and from school, even sometimes on a bathroom break during assembly. We would have competitions about who could handle the highest mg., who could blow the best Os and who could vape at the most inappropriate times. 

We thought it was funny, and in classic teen spirit, whenever any of us had a hacking smoker’s cough we would laugh about how the world was ending anyway—better to enjoy life while we still could. In talking to my fellow addicts a lot of us have the same story. It felt like a pretty inevitable process—vapes were cheap, easily accessible, and tasted good. What a lot of us weren’t aware of was the harmful and often predatory nature of an industry that created the perfect conditions for young teenagers to get addicted.

Somehow the evidence that vaping was safer than smoking evolved into the widely perpetuated narrative that vaping was effectively harmless. This was a coincidence lovingly paid for by vested interests. Philip Morris, the infamous global tobacco giant who has been dipping its toes in our vaping market, was recently found to be funding public health research on the subject of tobacco and vaping control in Aotearoa. This pales in comparison to the global context, in which countless questionable studies and lobbying campaigns have attempted to discredit the risks associated with vaping. 

Alongside this, the industry remained pretty much unregulated—complete with negligent age controls, wildly high nicotine concentrations, Instagram campaigns, promo codes, and loyalty programmes. It comes, then, as no surprise that most teenagers I knew were devout customers and that 38% of teenagers have tried it.

Through a slow stream of publicly-funded journalism exposés (thank you RNZ) the miracle that was created in my mind shattered.

I had known that vaping was probably bad for my lungs, but after ten minutes of researching the growing public and independently-funded research, I found that vaping was known to increase anxiety, the likelihood of lung injuries, pneumonia, seizures, high blood pressure, and heart problems. Alongside this, the World Health Organisation had stated its concern about the mounting evidence that vaping was more harmful than originally thought. 

I immediately had a panic attack (which came with no surprise, considering my 60mg vape and nicotine-related anxiety). I got pretty emo, and saw how my “accidental vaping addiction” probably wasn't an accident for the people I had paid to give it to me. 

It took me six months to properly quit. Even now, as I reminisce about that time corporate and governmental negligence hurt my health, I'm still thinking about how nice one little hit would be. 

I asked some of my friends who still vape, who still have these coughs, who I've vented about this shitshow to. Each of them has tried to quit. One of them told me that by the time it becomes a real problem, science will have solved lung cancer. Another said “yolo”—I understood. Trying to quit when your brain says no is easier said than done. 

In the last couple of years, it seems that our government has also become aware of the harms that the unregulated industry was causing. In 2020, it finally implemented some meaningful legislation—only specialised stores could sell vape flavours other than menthol or tobacco. Most advertising and marketing was banned and stricter enforcement of 18+ sales came into force. Some vape producers, as respectful of the regulation and committed to a Smoke-Free society as they were, have now diversified their menthol selections to include grape, peach, pineapple, and watermelon. And, you can still buy vapes online without I.D. 

It's the best kind of regulation! That which is almost purely ceremonial. 

It seems that the legacy of this lack of regulation is entrenched in our communities. In Tawa, my beloved hometown, our local dairy has already side-stepped the ‘stricter’ regulations by creating a makeshift sign that reads “Tawa Vapes”—a ‘specialised’ store within a store. Not only that but on the main road there are two of these ‘specialist’ vape stores and four other places to buy vaping products. Each of these stores remain just a few minutes’ walk from eight schools: one of them a high school with 1,400 students. 

The newest and flashiest looking shop on the main road is a brand new Shosha—a five-minute walk from my primary school and situated next to the public library on a street that hundreds of school children frequent. I used to walk down that road with my scooter in my school uniform, wondering if I had enough for hot chips. Last week, I drove past and saw two kids wearing that same uniform, staring into the window at (probably illegal) promotions for vape juice. I wondered whether we would ever recover from this disease, and whether the disease is nicotine addiction or greedy old men in suits.

Either way, in these trying times, do what you need to do to cope. Sometimes that does mean a cheeky hit of peach ice—I don't judge. But join me, the next time big businesses tell us they've found a miracle, in questioning whether that miracle might just be a higher profit margin.