Smokefree Aotearoa 2025: That is New Zealand's goal.
In two years, the Government wants less than five percent of Kiwis on the durries - and a major tool to achieve that is vapes which are known as the less harmful, but not fully understood, alternative.
However, for those addicted to the nicotine e-cigarettes, there is extremely limited support to go cold-turkey.
Today FM understands that vapers looking to quit cannot be helped by DHBs. Te Whatu Ora's Deborah Woodley told Today FM that "while the use of NRT [patches, lozenges, gum] to help vapers quit is emerging, there isn’t a lot of evidence yet on how to support adults who have switched to vaping to stop vaping".
Their advice is that "people should not attempt to quit vaping until they are confident they won’t revert back to smoking.
"Vapers wanting to quit can reduce the level of nicotine they use in their vaping device, and try similar methods to those that helped them stop smoking".
Asthma and Respiratory Foundation Māori community liaison in Gisborne, Sharon Pihema, has an 18-year-old daughter who is hooked to vaping, so they went to their GP for help.
Pihema told Tova O'Brien on Rāmere, Friday morning that her daughter was told by her GP to suck on a pen.
"I was so disappointed when I got that response, I actually couldn't believe that that's what the lady was telling me," Pihema said.
"That's when I decided that's not good enough and that's how I ended up in this role with the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation."
Pihema said the lack of support and information that's out there is "bad", telling O'Brien there need to be more robust measures.
"There just needs to be better leadership and coordination from central government around this issue," she said.
"Absolutely, keep doing the Smokefree 2025 work but we've got this issue coming through strong with our rangatahi and our young people - it's affecting thousands of them, there are dozens of families going through the same struggles that we are going through.
"It's really disheartening when we hear others saying that it's not as bad or that we're fearmongering or that we're overreacting because this is the reality that we're living with every day."
Listen to the full interview between Sharon Pihema and Tova above.
You can also download the full interview on the Tova podcast, and listen on the go.
