Following regulatory action by the Vaping Regulatory Authority, non-compliant vaping product notifications are being withdrawn by product notifiers, meaning those products can no longer be legally sold in New Zealand until they are compliant and have been re-notified with the correct information.
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In November, the Authority wrote to 60 companies about 2,149 vaping products that had been notified for sale in New Zealand, where further evidence was required to confirm they complied with the law.
These companies were given until 12 noon Friday 9 December to provide information demonstrating their vaping products were compliant with current regulations.
As of 13 December, 54 companies had responded to this request, and 472 notifications had been withdrawn. The Authority is currently assessing the information provided for a further 1,083 products to ensure they comply with the relevant product safety requirements.
Ten of the companies that responded to the request for information have been given an extension to 20 December to provide clarifications. Those companies that have not responded are being contacted individually to ensure they provide the required information about their products.
Failure to provide the required information by the deadline without a reasonable excuse is an offence, and notifiers may face prosecution if they don’t respond.
Companies were required to provide product safety information following a review of the 8,083 vaping substances able to be sold in New Zealand. The review focused on whether the products included prohibited ingredients or levels of nicotine or nicotine salts that exceed the legal limits.
The review found no issues with the majority of vaping products, but the Authority will continue to monitor the vaping market and work with the vaping sector to ensure all products available in New Zealand are compliant.
Recently, the Authority has taken several actions to support compliance in vaping regulation following concerns that some businesses may have misunderstood the legally permitted levels of nicotine salts in vaping products, meaning that some products for sale could exceed these legal limits.
One of these requirements when notifying is that vaping liquid for sale in New Zealand must not exceed a freebase nicotine concentration of 20mg/mL or a nicotine salt concentration of 50mg/mL. These two separate limits reflect that some vaping substances use nicotine derived by tobacco by itself, as a freebase, while others mix the nicotine with an acid, such as benzoic acid, creating a salt.
At this stage, there is no evidence that vaping products being sold in New Zealand have levels of nicotine high enough to significantly increase the risk of harm. The main risk with vaping products with levels of nicotine beyond the permitted level in New Zealand is that they may increase a person’s nicotine addiction. ■