Would you look at that: we’ve finally got some rules around vaping and the law will be introduced to Parliament on Monday.

Sales of vaping products to under-18s will be banned and vapers will be barred from lighting up in smoke-free areas. 

There will be a ban on advertising and sponsorship involving vaping products and e-cigarettes.

But while this is similar to smoking laws, the Minister Jenny Salesa acknowledges the part vaping has played in getting people off the smokes as we head towards Smokefree 2025.

So full disclosure. I vape. I started two years ago to get off smoking. It worked. Spectacularly, can I say. I’m cutting down on the vaping. I’ll have a puff once or twice a day.

Now, bizarrely, flavoured vapes will only be allowed to be sold in R18 specialty stores. In dairies and supermarkets, the only flavours allowed will be tobacco, mint and menthol.

My preferred flavour is  Vanilla Custard.  It’s not sickly sweet it’s not tangy. It leaves a room smelling of the faintest hint of vanilla which is quite pleasant.

Being told I and others will have to go out of our way to find a flavour we like at a speciality shop full of bongs and glow in the dark Frisbees seems counterproductive. I wonder how many will just go back to the fags rather than traipsing across town.

I guess the law allows the three flavours because they’re tradition tobacco flavours and so that’s for the smokers trying to quit and they don’t want all the candy flavours seducing the young.  Well, hold on.  If vaping is now R18 the young are protected and what’s all this about restricting adults legal choice?

Another quibble is how long this law took to draft. They started in November 2018.  The reason I’m not doing an interview about the subject is that, apart from the flavour weirdness, this law is so basic and predictable that it’s boring.  It’s the sort of thing a half decent health official could bang up in a month.  So why did it take so long?

• ‘It’s taken a while’: Government unveils plans to restrict sale of vaping

National is asking the same question, which is only a little rich. Vaping has been around for years and nothing happened until now under all governments, National and Labour led.

My real concern is with the glacial pace of the bureaucrats and advisers that serve the government. Once the trigger was pulled 18 months ago, why didn’t the Civil Service get cracking.

If you’re of a certain age you’ll remember Sir Humphrey and his Minister in the telly programme Yes Minister.  That was called a comedy though politicians actually called it a documentary.  The obfuscation and bewilderment you saw in that programme happens every day in Wellington. The Civil Service has to learn to pull its finger out.

I learnt of another classic today.  Seven years ago Watercare Auckland applied to the Waikato Regional Council to double the cities 150,000 cubic meter a day intake of water from the Waikato River. Nothing’s happened.  The council says it’s legally obliged to process hundreds of applications ahead of Auckland’s in the queue. 

Hello? Seven years of holding a city to ransom over water.  Because of bureaucracy! Get a grip, civil servants.  Use common sense and prioritise.