People should embrace vaping if it helps them quit smoking, according to one expert.
Dr George Laking told Three's The Project vaping needs to be promoted as an alternative to smoking if New Zealand is to meet its smoke-free 2025 goal.
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"My focus is about smoking, and I think it's important for this country to keep its focus on smoking," he said.
"We are failing to hit that smoke-free 2025 target - we're not going to get there - and with this vaping technology, that has the potential to be the successor technology."
For Dr Laking the most important thing to remember is that while vaping contains some of the same ingredients as cigarettes it's in far smaller amounts.
"For example the diacetyl that came up, they found some of that inside some vaping liquids but the point being that we already know that that stuff is inside cigarettes," he said.
"[It's] about 100 times greater level inside the cigarettes that people smoke."
Watch the video for the full The Project interview.
