By GUY WILLIAMS
Wakatipu High principal Steve Hall’s requested a meeting with the owner of vaping store opening a stone’s throw from the school’s entrance.
Shosha, a national vaping products retailer, is opening the store in the Wyndham Garden hotel building on November 23.
Hall’s got concerns about the store’s closeness, and is meeting its out-of-town owner before it opens.
Under part of a new vaping law that came into effect on Wednesday, it’ll be illegal to sell vaping products to kids under 18.
Hall says he wants to understand the store’s policies and ‘‘bring to the meeting anything we can do to help it work as well as it can’’.
‘‘From a brief conversation I’ve had with this gentleman, they don’t allow anyone with a school uniform into their stores, but I have to have a meeting with the guy to understand that definitively.’’
Vaping is ‘‘not an uncommon thing’’ among teenagers, and the Ministry of Education has just issued guidance to schools, he says.
‘‘By a point next year, school sites have to be vape-free, like they have to be smokefree.’’
