Smoke and Mirrors, Part 2
Some of you may recall the earlier blog post (Smoke and Mirrors) that touched upon the sneaky way in which PMI began marketing IQOS heat not burn technology without any government intervention at the end of 2016.
Mind you, on 22 December, the govt somehow included it under the same legislation that bans snus. Parliament was NOT in session as they had already left for the holiday so, as one of the AVCA members put it, “some civil servant wrote a law and enacted it “ retroactively. Many people in the vaping community were not happy about the situation at the time and are still not amused at the delays in the announcement and the seeming embargo on any information on the process.
IQOS isn’t going away anytime soon as the latest guidance from the Ministry of Health on the product is that the battery pack is not illegal, but the “heet” sticks are a tobacco product and therefore are illegal. Advice issued this morning (2 Feb 17). Meanwhile, we at AVCA have been told not to expect any update or response to our mulitple queries on the legalisation of nicotine eliquid in NZ until parliament is back in session on 7 Feb 2017.
Summary: MoH can take the time to comment on IQOS and heat not burn, but NOT utter a single word about the status of the public consultation and submissions on making nicotine e liquid for vapourisers legal for retail sale in New Zealand, even when the original statement was due before the holiday break in Parliament.
So I decided to throw it back to the community via the AVCA Public forum on Facebook to narrow down the focus. The question was this: “If PMI removed all combustible tobacco from the NZ market and only marketed/sold Heat Not Burn, such as IQOS, would that be acceptable?”
As much as I would love to give a resounding everyone-agrees kind of answer, it does not exist.
As with the first time I asked this question, many folks believe that legalisation of nicotine e liquid should be the priority (they are vapers after all); then there are those who believe it is still tobacco (it is) and even though it is made to work with heat not burn, someone could still put a light to it and smoke the “heet” stick like a fag; and lastly there are those who believe that prohibition of any kind is unacceptable = including nicotine e-liquid and heat not burn.
The caveat here being that a) people want to see nicotine e-liquid legalised before the government even considers allowing heat not burn and b) to see third party objective science that shows true harm reduction from the heat not burn product versus combustible tobacco.
AVCA has said before, and will say again: we are about harm reduction. If heat not burn can be shown, through independent analysis and research, to be less harmful than combustible tobacco, then we will support it fully as a harm reduction product. But first, we, as representatives of the vaping community and vapers ourselves, want to see nicotine e liquid available legally for retail sale in New Zealand, with some form of regulation involved to guarantee quality, consistency and safety. And yet, we wait for a response from the government which will hopefully arrive sooner rather than later.
/end
