February 04, 2020
Alarm at youth anti-vaping campaign
A Māori expert on how to stop smoking is calling out the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation for what she says is an inaccurate and ill-considered youth anti-vaping campaign.
Dr Marewa Glover from the Centre of Research Excellence: Indigenous Sovereignty and Smoking says the 'Don’t Get Sucked' in campaign could backfire and increase the curiosity of young people and school children to experiment with vaping.
She says the campaign website appears to have been quickly cobbled together using misleading and false information about vaping found on American websites.
The risk is it will increase curiosity about vaping among young people, as happened in the United States.
"And of course we will suffer disproportionate negative consequences in our Maori community because of the higher smoking rates. If there are any negative effects, particularly from children becoming curious about 'what's this vaping cannabis?' this is very serious because in the US they have had an outbreak of lung injuries and deaths as a result of people vaping black market contaminated cannabis," Dr Glover says.
She says the site directly contradicts the government’s Vaping Facts website.
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