New Zealand Statistical Association 2024 Conference

Janet Stacey

The University of Auckland/ESR

State of the nation: Accessibility of vaping products in New Zealand

This is joint work with Alex Chen

Over the last 4 years, we have investigated the state of the vaping market in New Zealand. This has been a time of evolving regulatory environment and increasing awareness of the associated risks and safety issues, particularly in young people. The Ministry of Health holds a register of Specialist Vaping Retailers. Changes to this register were monitored to understand differences in the number of registered entities as legislation changes occurred. Store information from the register was used to carry out market analysis. Online stores were scraped to obtain information about the products available for sale and trends were determined. Physical store addresses were geocoded, and geospatial analysis was carried out, including developing an understanding of where they are situated in relation to endangered communities. A dashboard was developed to visualise these results. This talk will discuss the state of the vaping market and show the key findings from this work.