It's all kicked off because the government's handing out free vapes to smokers to stop them getting what we know could be a death sentence.
They've done a deal to buy a bunch of them for $500,000.
Between last January and July, 3000 were given vaping kits and nearly half of them stopped smoking.
Which, ordinarily, you would think would be a good news story.
Not so for Kelly Burrowes, Auckland University Vaping Researcher.
She said on Newstalk ZB that it wasn't.
So I spoke yesterday to Robert Beaglehole. Yes, the Robert Beaglehole.
Former boss of the World Health Organisation. Public health expert.
He says some of the searches are from laboratory-based scientist with no epidemiological or public health experience and doesn't have the big picture in mind. He says one of the other antagonists to this approach clearly doesn't comprehend the evidence, because it's a mystery to why someone would oppose something that is much less harmful and cheaper.
It feels a bit to me like the Covid days when you had so-called experts piping up about the harms of a disease without taking a helicopter view of the best way a society should manage such risk for the least-overall harm.
There's a political element to this, too. Because we know there are certain politicians desperate to paint Casey Costello as some sort of big vape lobbyist in drag.
The choice, really, if you'd call it that, seems to come down to the devil we know and devil we don't.
Ryan Bridge is a New Zealand broadcaster who has worked on many current affairs television and radio shows. He currently hosts Newstalk ZB's Early Edition - where this article was sourced.
2 comments:
As one who smoked 80 cigarettes a day, I knew it was not doing me much good. Do you think that is bad? My father used to smoke 150 a day! I cannot remember a time when he did not have a cigarette in his mouth. I suffered severe headaches until I thought I was responsible for a wife and three children and if I kept smoking, I would not see any of my grandchildren. I gave it away in a flash many years ago. I am of the firm opinion that anything apart from fresh air is not good for the lungs, and that includes vaping. There are no prizes for guessing where dad is!
I smoked for 55 years and my wife for 47 (she started when we shacked up together....... "if you can't beat 'em, join' em"). I rolled ciggies for us both - started my day by filling an Old Holborn tin with rollies for her (now there's true love for ya). We lived outside NZ for 35 years in developing countries where baccy is cheap. When we saw the price of tobacco in NZ, we decided that was it, finish, no way was I handing over a hundred bucks to the govt every time we buy a pouch. We went cold turkey in a 5-star hotel room 3 days before flying out, then had a 3 days/2 nights trip from Turkey back to NZ with no stop-overs, and a week's quarantine (this was back in late 2021). At the end of it, we were 'cured'; no cravings, no regrets.
We looked at vaping as an alternative but sitting there blowing hot steam in and out of your head looks so stupid we decided against it. Besides, that vaping sounds mighty dangerous to me. I can't help wondering when the Min of Health will be offering vape addicts subsidised tobacco to help them get off the vaping habit!
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