A Waikato student rapidly choked and collapsed after vaping in his school lunchbreak - he's since vowed never to touch the stuff again.
The Cambridge High School student was taken to Waikato Hospital last Wednesday, and his caregivers were told vaping was the cause, the school said.
Tighter rules around vaping - including a ban on sales to under-18s are on the horizon, with a law change introduced to Parliament on Monday.
The junior student who stopped breathing at Cambridge High is now back in class, and the school has told parents that it felt "incredibly fortunate" he survived.
"We don't want to dramatise anything like this, but I think that it's important that when things like that happen, we don't bury our heads in the sand. Reality is reality," deputy principal, pastoral care and guidance John McDonnell told Stuff.
"Our students and our youth need to be aware that this is dangerous.
"[The student will] never ever do it again, he said. He got the fright of his life."
The boy and his parents are being supported by Cambridge High, and gave the school permission to use his case to show why its leaders are worried about vaping.
He did not have any pre-existing conditions the school was aware of but had been vaping at lunchtime on Wednesday, right before he choked and collapsed.
A crowd of students gathered, signalling to teachers, and a passing duty teacher got him breathing again before he was taken to hospital by ambulance.
"In this case, whatever the substance was, it wasn't appropriate for a youth to be inhaling and vaping," McDonnell said.
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Vaping is a fad that many students see as a a harmless alternative to cigarettes, he said, but it will be years before we know the long-term effects.
"We've got 14-year-olds and 15-year-olds who have never smoked in their life and they're vaping," he said. "You can't tell me that's healthy."
Vaping is much less harmful than smoking, but not harmless, Ministry of Health advice says, and people should only vape in order to quit smoking.
McDonnell said vaping can be easier for students to hide, as they can use small devices which don't emit smoke.
While some schools may take a punitive approach, Cambridge High has opted for education and awareness.
Newsletters have pointed out the dangers to students and parents, and targeted letters go to the parents of any students found vaping - including information on support available from the school nurse.
Many of the young people spoken to by University of Otago public health professor Janet Hoek said they'd tried vapes passed around at parties.
"It's often unclear to those who are experimenting with it if the vape has got nicotine in it ... Often the nicotine content can be quite high, so they become at risk of becoming dependent."
Yet vaping is a new phenomenon and it will require years of tracking vapers' health to work out the long-term effects, Hoek said.
"The best information we have at the moment is that those risks are likely to be fewer and less serious than if people were to continue smoking," she said.
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"It's a good thing if people who are smoking can switch away from smoking completely and move to vaping ... For young people who are not smoking, taking up vaping is a really negative outcome."
Marketing aimed at young people - such as sponsoring music events or using social media influencers - is troubling for Hoek and her colleagues.
So, they're glad to see some of Parliament's plans to tighten the rules.
As well as outlawing advertising and sponsorship of the products, a proposed law change would ban vaping products and e-cigarettes sales to under-18s.
"I think that's a really good thing, to get that marketing completely out of young people's environments," Hoek said.
The change would also limit the flavours which could be sold in dairies and service stations to three and rule out using vapes or smokeless tobacco in smokefree areas.
Those switching from smoking need specialist advice, she said.
Cambridge High's McDonnell sees the changes as a start, but said principals have been raising concerns for more than a year.
"In my view, [the changes] should have started quite some time ago."
