Stores within stores: The loophole dairies exploit in vape store restrictions

Tucked in the back corner of a dairy, fresh timber supports a sliding door with an R18 sign on it and a hand-drawn sign that reads “VAPE STORE”.

Despite being no bigger than a kit-set shed and quite clearly inside a dairy, this is considered a specialist vape retailer, or SVR.

Under current law, retailers must simply prove vaping products are sold from a fixed, permanent structure, and account for at least 70% of total store revenue.

While generic retailers are limited to selling menthol, tobacco and mint flavoured vapes, specialist stores can sell a full range, public health Professor Janet Hoek said.

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“As a way of skirting around that flavour restriction, we began to see small retail outlets creating these stores within a store,” she said.

As long as these specialist “stores” open before August they can be within 300 metres of a school or marae.

These loopholes mean new regulations will fail to stem the impact of vaping on rangatahi (youth), according to a research letter Hoek has co-authored, published on Friday in the New Zealand Medical Journal.

Marnie Wilton, co-founder of Vape Free Kids NZ, has seen this happen in West Auckland, at the dairy where her children buy their ice creams, and at the South Auckland dairy near her children’s grandparents’ house.

“They’ve been out, hammer and nails … It’s just the wild west,” Wilton said.

“I realise the shop is legally only allowed to sell to 18-year-olds and above, but stocking them at shops so close to schools normalises these products in our community. Also, older kids sell to younger ones.”

Not all dairy owners want to sell vapes: Raju Patel, owner of Green Door Dairy in Miramar, Wellington said he would welcome a ban on vaping and frequently turned away underage children trying to buy vapes.

He had no interest in setting up a specialist store and said he only sold generic flavours because people kept asking for them.

Tejas Patel, owner of Clarries Newsagent’s in Post Office Square in downtown Wellington, would apply to be a specialist vape retailer if he had the space, but his store is full. The generic vapes he sells account for about 20% of revenue, while tobacco is 8%.

Part of the issue is that unless a dairy is a specialist store, it cannot recommend particular vape products to customers who smoke, said Sunny Kaushal, chairperson of the Dairy and Business Owners’ Group.

“It’s crazy. A dairy owner breaks the law if they suggest someone asking for a packet of Rothmans that they should try a vape … we can raise vaping but can’t point them to a particular device.”

He also referenced the Government’s plan to slash the number of tobacco outlets from 6000 to 600 from the end of this year and ban dairies from selling smokeless tobacco.

“This is a market response to poor policy decisions. If dairies had been able to sell … smokeless tobacco we would not see as many SVRs.”

When it came to supplying vapes to young rangatahi, the key threat was ram raiders and gangs, not dairies, Kaushal said.

He maintained dairies were an important player in the Smokefree 2025 goal – and had been campaigning for cessation training for dairy owners to no avail.

“These store owners know those smokers by name, by face … if these people are given authority to talk about or suggest vaping, they would be able to turn smokers into non-smokers and it helps.”

Both Hoek and Wilton wanted a sinking lid on vape stores and vapes to be controlled through health professionals or people with detailed knowledge of vaping products, to support people trying to stop smoking.

“Right from the get go, vapes should have been supplied through pharmacies, or via people with training in smoking cessation, who could provide that wrap-around support,” Hoek said.

Wilton said whether stores sell menthol vapes or fancy flavours, these addictive substances were far too commonplace and was behind a petition to see vaping products banned from dairies, service stations and supermarkets.

“A vape shop is a vape shop. What flavour of addiction do you want our kids to have? Let’s just get them out of our communities.”