The proportion of 14-15 year old Year 10 students vaping regularly has decreased significantly for the second year running in the annual ASH survey of Kiwi youth.

The rate has dropped by almost 2 per cent, with 18.2 per cent in 2022, and 16.4 per cent in 2023.

ASH says it’s also very encouraging to see youth daily vaping rates not increasing, but now plateauing at 10 per cent. The number who have ever tried vaping also showed a significant decrease  from 40.1 per cent to 37.5 per cent.

“Aotearoa was very slow to regulate vaping, and we saw a rapid rise in youth use in the years up until 2021 but then we finally had some legislation put in place," says ASH director Ben Youdan.

"Two years later, whilst the rate of youth use is still too high,  it is good to see that fewer young people are vaping, and experimenting with vapes.” 

“Regular” use is defined as using either daily, weekly or monthly, “Daily” use is using at least once a day, while “Ever tried” measures overall experimental use and current users. 

With youth smoking, ASH is pleased that daily rates have shown no increase, staying stable at only 1.2 per cent which amounts to only around 700 students across the country. 

ASH says it’s also reassuring to see the numbers of those who have never tried a cigarette continuing to increase at a significant rate, reaching 87.8 per cent compared to 85.8 per cent last year. 

“Young people are clearly rejecting tobacco, and these trends are echoed in the smoking data for young adults who have seen some of the biggest declines in smoking across the motu in recent years,” says Ben.

ASH is also delighted to see an almost 4per cent increase in Māori youth never smoking rates (73.8 per cent to 77.7 per cent) and in particular an almost 6 per cent increase never smoking by Māori girls (71 per cent to 76.8 per cent). 

The vaping rates of Māori girls though, tell a more concerning story with this cohort vaping more than 2.5 times the average rate - almost 25 per cent more.

“It is encouraging to see fewer Māori tamariki then ever smoking, and especially the jump in young wāhine who have never smoked," says ASH Board Member and head of the Māori SUDI prevention service, Fay Selby-Law.

"This follows the large recent declines in smoking amoung adults. However, there are still significant disparities, especially with vaping.

"Although vapes appear to be helping many adults stop smoking, we still need to be doing much more to keep them out of the hands of young people.” 

While the survey found that generally daily smoking and vaping rates for most ethnicities and genders remained low and similar to last year, ASH says more urgent work is needed with Pacific teenagers.

Their vaping rates are still slowly trending up, while their decline in smoking is slower than any other ethnicity. 

“Despite gains in reducing smoking for almost all groups, progress remains far too slow for Pasifika, including preventing the uptake of vaping," says ASH Board Member Sir Collin Tukuitonga.

"It really reinforces why there is still a huge need for Pasifika led approaches that understand and work with our diverse communities on keeping youth smoking low, and reversing the rise of teen vaping.”

ASH’s Ben Youdan says that this year’s survey is some good news for our youth.

“Even though there is widespread frustration about the repeals, we should celebrate the fact that overall young people are actually one step ahead of the policymakers, and rejecting smoking in greater numbers than ever," says Ben.