Vaping a gateway to smoking, study shows

E-cigarette companies have argued that vaping displaces smoking for young people, but a new study, looking at 25 years of data on Kiwi teenagers, shows this is not the case.

The new research, from Cancer Council NSW, the University of Sydney’s Daffodil Centre, and University of Auckland, on vaping and smoking trends among New Zealand adolescents is challenging previous findings used to lobby against effective e-cigarette policies.

The research examines the potential impact of vaping on smoking trends among nearly 700,000 students aged 14 to 15 years old (Year 10) over a 25-year period.

University of Auckland research fellow Dr Lucy Hardie (FMHS) says youth smoking rates in New Zealand were declining steeply before vapes came on the scene in 2010, but that progress has slowed. See Lancet Regional Health—Western Pacific.

In 2023, approximately 12.6 percent of 14 to 15-year-old students in New Zealand had ever smoked, nearly double the 6.6 percent predicted in the pre-vaping era.

Similarly, in 2023, around 3 percent of students were smoking regularly, but this rate would have been just 1.8 percent had it followed its pre-vaping trend.

The research contradicts an earlier influential study from 2020 that suggested vaping might be displacing smoking among New Zealand youth. See Lancet Public Health.

The new study uses the same data but draws on a much wider time period, Hardie explains.

The researchers found that vaping may have actually slowed New Zealand's progress in preventing adolescent smoking.

Sam Egger, statistician at the Daffodil Centre for research on cancer control and policy, says, “This new research shows the prevalence of daily vaping in New Zealand increased from 1.1 percent in 2015 to 10 percent in 2023 marking a staggering nine-fold increase over eight years.”

Hardie says, “New Zealand’s policy settings are too lenient. Vapes are addictive, appealing and easily accessible to young people. The high rates of use indicate vaping is normalised within New Zealand youth culture, which may influence experimentation with other nicotine products, such as smoking.”

This study highlights the need for a stronger response to youth vaping, Hardie says.

“Unfortunately, the most effective policies to reduce smoking, such as the smoke-free generation, were repealed in 2023.

“The coalition’s approach to smoking seems to rely on vaping and other nicotine products.

“This study shows that vaping is not the silver bullet we had hoped to reduce smoking and, in fact, vaping may have hindered progress among young people.”

Read: Trends in smoking prevalence among 14–15-year-old adolescents before and after the emergence of vaping in New Zealand; an interrupted time series analysis of repeated cross-sectional data, 1999–2023