A promotional image from the youth vaping awareness campaign Protect Your Breath Photo: protectyourbreath.co.nz
Vaping is a daily habit for an increasing number of New Zealand teens.
As researchers figure out why and what to do about it, the youth-led digital campaign Protect Your Breath is working to encourage safe, non-judgmental conversations on the topic.
Protect Your Breath offers an informative website and a video series Connect to Hā which explores the power of hā (breath).
This school holidays, South Aucklanders can explore an interactive installation about breath, well-being and stress management at the Later Vaper Arcade in Manukau Square.
Rather than adding stigma to vaping, the Protect Your Breath campaign is focused on good reasons to be vape-free, says Te Aka Whai Ora's Deputy CEO Selah Hart.
She hopes checking out the Later Vaper Arcade can help kickstart difficult but necessary conversations amongst rangatahi and whanau, and also remind people that vaping is intended to be a cessation tool for current smokers.
"We've had generations of whanau who have entrenched smoking addiction and some of those behaviours, whether theyre aware or not, have been passed through to this current generation."
Although tobacco cigarettes are a significantly more harmful product, vaping is not without harm, she says.
"That's probably the key message that we need to drive home … [Vapes] are yes, less harmful, but only if you start from a platform of being a person who currently smokes."
Photo: @protectyourbreathnz
Protect your Breath is a joint initiative of Te Aka Whai Ora and Te Whatu Ora produced by the ad agency Curative with input from the Hā Collective - a crew of Māori and Pacific young people aged 16-20.
The campaign's overall goal is to help create safe spaces for young people to share their experiences with vaping, Hart says, and also offer alternative forms for stress relief.
"Addiction is not something we should be stigmatising people for, but it has to really come back to what are we doing to build the resilience in those people to overcome whatever life pressures are existent with them, [and help them] get them away from resorting to addictive substances to deal with those stressors."
