A new trial designed to help Kiwis quit vaping is among 44 programmes in the country’s health system to be funded by an NZD 53 million (USD 32.3 million) government grant, reports the NZHerald.

NZD 1,187,524 (USD 723.797) of the grant has been apportioned to the trial which the University of Auckland’s Associate Professor Natalie Walker said her team would use to carry out clinical trials into two methods of low-cost interventions to help New Zealanders stop vaping, reports the NZHerald.
The trail, which is expected to last for three years, will include using a drug that partially blocks the effects of nicotine on the brain, called cystine. Tests will then show if the drug is more effective than a tapered reduction when accompanied by support from New Zealand Quitline.
According to Walker, there is little evidence on the best method to support anyone wanting to quit vaping and added that as long as the government continued to increase new tobacco control policies, numbers of vapers would rise.
“These policy changes in the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan will make medical nicotine replacement therapy and vapes [e-cigarettes] the only legal nicotine available for smokers to manage withdrawal symptoms,” she said.
According to the NZHerald, Walker said the trial would also assess whether interventions for quitting vaping had any unintended consequences on smoking rates.
“The priority remains that people should not smoke cigarettes, which kill about 5000 New Zealanders a year,” she said.