Missing: Hamilton City Council bans vaping in public areas

Vaping will now join smoking as a prohibited activity in Hamilton’s public spaces.

However, concerns remain about how united Hamilton City Council and the Waikato District Board of Health are to rid the city of what is increasingly seen as a future threat to the well-being of the younger generations of the city. city ​​in particular.

The council’s community committee voted unanimously Tuesday to add vaping while smoking as a disallowed activity in council-owned and operated parks, playgrounds and buildings, including the Hamilton Transportation Center, stops bus and at all council-operated events.

The move has already been met with the disapproval of pro-vape lobbyists, primarily Jonathan Devery, the owner of Vapo and Alt New Zealand, the country’s largest Kiwi-owned vaping company, who have criticized it as a step backward. to make the country. “smoke free”.

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At Tuesday’s committee meeting, Councilmember Ewan Wilson lamented the lack of assistance from respiratory specialists to discuss the health threat posed by vaping.

Rather, he had Googled the information himself, and his research revealed a University of North Carolina study that found there were toxins and chemicals in e-cigarettes that could cause lung and cardiovascular disease.

The US Surgeon General had also issued warnings for particulates such as benzene, which is found in automobile exhaust; and heavy metals, such as nickel, tin, and lead in secondhand steam smoke.

“There is a considerable amount of evidence that there is considerable harm,” Wilson said.

One health expert in attendance was Waikato District Health Board Public Health Physician Nina Scott.

“The research is very new,” he said. “Intuitively, we know that it is a really silly idea to inhale these things into the lungs.”

Also at the meeting via an audio-visual link was Cancer Society health promoter Charlie Poihipi, who said he had probed Hamilton high school principals who had problems with students engaging in content nicotine in vaporizers.

“Now you have a generation of young people who have never smoked becoming addicted to vaping.

“The increase in vaping has also led to a slight increase in smoking. Originally, the argument was that it was going to reduce smoking rates, but unfortunately it has increased. “

Meanwhile, the council refused to grant a request from DHB to make the streets around the Waikato Hospital campus and the Waiora building in the central city’s smoke and vapor-free areas.

Before agreeing to this, the council wants the DHB to actively consider a recommendation from Coroner Wallace Bain in December 2018 to “take steps to ensure that patients at risk smoke in a safe environment.”

That recommendation was part of a salvo of instructions issued to DHB by Bain following his investigation into the suicide death of Hamilton’s man Nicky Stevens, son of city councilman and former board of health member Dave Macpherson, while at the hospital. mental health unit care at Waikato Hospital.

The DHB had not followed that instruction and was instead taking a tougher line by discouraging smoking by patients, including mental health patients, and others in the hospital.

“Smoking is a mental health risk,” Scott told the committee. “If you support [depressed people] To quit smoking, the effect on their depression is greater than giving them antidepressants.

“In the old days you used to say ‘Don’t even try to help them quit because they need to,’ and the evidence has leaned completely in the opposite direction.”

Following the committee’s decision, Devery quickly issued a statement denouncing him.

“Hamilton city councilors have also completely overlooked the fact that vaping is the most effective smoking cessation tool in New Zealand history, so our smoking rates are at record highs.” .