Let's make it Vapefree
Behind the Campaign
Acknowledging the complexity of youth vaping, Protect Your Breath has been developed with The Hā Collective – a group of young people, experts and schools. This has helped us to:
Uncover
Uncover the relationship young people and their communities have with vaping – including common attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours.
Explore
Explore creative opportunities to interrupt these ideas and behavioural norms.
Encourage
Encourage young people to think critically about their use of vaping products.
The Process
Our process has included three key elements.
Interviews with Experts
To ensure the campaign is grounded in existing research and evidence, we spoke with a long list of experts from academia, health promotion agencies, and service providers. These folks offered a wealth of knowledge in the areas of research, policy, and harm reduction strategy around tobacco and vaping use in Aotearoa.
Schools Survey
During the interview phase, our experts noted the lack of research on young people’s attitudes towards vaping.
To help us understand more about the role vaping plays in the lives of Aotearoa rangatahi, we collaborated with research agency Cogo to conduct an online survey for secondary school students. Eight schools participated, and we received 1975 complete responses from young people.
YOUTH-LED INSIGHT GATHERING AND CO-DESIGN
The academics, health promoters, and service providers we interviewed stressed that rangatahi themselves are the real experts on why young people are vaping. Recognising the wisdom of this view, we recruited a group of rangatahi from across Aotearoa - who formed the Hā Collective. These rangatahi are our project navigators, truth tellers, and key creative minds. Using worksheets, creative prompts, and conversation starters, the Hā Collective interviewed more than 100 of their friends and whānau about vaping. Using the insights gleaned during this process, they then worked collaboratively with the wider project team to investigate how best to communicate with other young people about vaping – helping set the direction for the entire campaign.
What we heard
Our expert interviews, school survey, and youth-led insight gathering processes surfaced six critical insights.
Vaping serves as a
Coping mechanism
for some young people
Vaping serves as a coping mechanism for some young people
53% of daily vapers feel stressed out or worried every day, compared to 33% of non-vapers.
– Hā Collective Vaping Survey
Our insight gathering reveals youth vaping needs to be seen in context – recognising the major challenges faced by young people today, including high levels of stress and mental health issues. For many young people, vaping is a response to – and an attempt to cope with – the very real pressures of the worlds they live in. Many young people are using vaping as a mental health regulator, or a means by which to ‘get through the day’. Some young people indicated that vaping seems like a preferable, less harmful option to other coping mechanisms or forms of risk-taking they could be engaging in – like using alcohol or other drugs, or self-harming.
Reactions to vaping can impact the way young people
see themselves
and their future
Reactions to vaping can impact the way young people see themselves and their future
41% of those who vape or have tried vaping wouldn’t want their teachers to find out.*
*Hā Collective Vaping Survey
Young people are keenly aware of the attitudes towards vaping held by their peers and the significant adults in their lives. They indicated there is a great deal of moral judgement about whether a young person chooses to vape or not.
Schools are struggling to respond to the issue of student vaping, and many are taking a punitive approach – offering little in the way of restorative practice and critical thinking around risk taking behaviours. These punitive measures can have a profoundly negative, long-lasting impact – doing more harm to a young person’s wellbeing and future than the act of vaping itself might have.
Vapes are
Easily accessible
and often shared among friends
Vapes are easily accessible and often shared among friends
71% of rangatahi who buy their own vapes, are purchasing them from local vaping stores.*
*Hā Collective Vaping Survey
Whether young people identify as vapers or not, most say they have ready access to vapes – through whānau, peers, or local knowledge about retailers who are unlikely to check ID.
Vapes are often passed around in social environments, and even those who identify as ‘non-vapers’ are likely to ‘have a hit’ – saying that sometimes, it’s just easier to join in.
Vaping could be
Just a phase
for some young people
Vaping could be ‘just a phase’ for some young people
35% of rangatahi who vape on a daily basis reported vaping because they ‘really enjoy it’ vs. only 9% of rangatahi who vape on a casual basis.
*Hā Collective Vaping Survey
Vaping is currently part of a cultural zeitgeist – trending in young people’s social spaces; both online and off. Vaping knowledge can be a form of social currency, with young people readily sharing what they know – costs, vaping flavours, nicotine levels, vape tricks, and more.
Our insight gathering suggests that some young people will simply vape to be part of the ‘scene’, but are unlikely to keep it up or form long-term habits.
Young people want to make
informed decisions
young people want to
make informed decisions
“Haha you can tell these ad people are trying to be like young people but they’re just trying to scare me and assume that I’m a dumb young person.”
*Hā Collective Vaping Survey
Young people are well aware that the marketing strategies and accessibility of vapes are intentional ploys to get them to become purchasers and users of vaping products. On the other hand, rangatahi are also distrustful of ‘quit vape’ campaigns and conversations – viewing them as superficial scaremongering, delivered by ‘adults with an agenda'.
Young people told us they want to access judgement-free information and conversations that can support their self-determination and decision-making.
Rangatahi don't like the idea of
Non-vapers starting
to vape
Rangatahi don’t like the idea of non-vapers starting to vape
“I wish there was less vaping amongst our tamariki. I think they’re doing it because we’re motivating them to do it by just vaping around them.”
*Hā Collective Vaping Survey
Young people who are already vaping are protective of those who are important to them, and many said they didn't want their peers, younger siblings, or cousins to start vaping. Rangatahi told us they didn’t want themselves or their loved ones to become victims to the rhetoric that vapers are ‘bad people’. They felt this narrative could undermine a young person’s ability to achieve their aspirations and goals.
Our research indicated that rangatahi who vape are more likely to be concerned about their friends’ health than their own. In addition, they prefer to talk to school friends about their stress and worry, rather than parents or teachers.
Privacy Policy
We do not collect any personal information from you on this website. However, we do use tracking cookies with our website analytics tool to analyse non-identifiable web traffic data to understand how people are accessing content on our site. This data is aggregated and cannot personally identify you. Our web analytics will respect any “do not track” setting that you might have set on your browser.
FIND SUPPORT
If you want to learn more about vaping in Aotearoa or how to talk about it in your own community visit:
The Lowdown is a space created with rangatahi, for rangatahi – providing support with hauora, identity, culture and mental health.
Tūturu is a uniquely Aotearoa approach that brings schools and health providers together so students can learn, be well and prepared for the modern world.
Quitline
Are you or a loved one trying to quit vaping? If you need free support or advice free call Quitline on 0800 778 778
Next
Youth Vaping in Aotearoa
