New Zealand’s largest vape retailer, Shosha, faces a Ministry of Health investigation over allegations it bypassed domestic advertising bans by steering local buyers to an offshore website, RNZ reported.
Regulations introduced in June 2025 prohibited retailers from advertising vaping products, barring pictures of merchandise from local websites and social media channels. One week before those restrictions took effect, Shosha emailed customers to announce that its local .co.nz domain would drop product images to comply with the incoming rules, according to RNZ.
Subscribers were instead directed to a newly created .com global website listed at a United States address, where product displays remained fully visible for direct ordering, RNZ reported. Associate Health Minister Casey Costello subsequently referred the global site to the Ministry of Health for investigation.
While the ministry said that the shosha.com site was registered and hosted in the U.S. and did not deliver regulated products domestically, researchers argued the platform functioned as a local marketing workaround. Auckland University school of population health researcher Lucy Hardie told RNZ that a product availability tool on the site listed only domestic locations.
“One of the first things was, there was a product availability tool, so you can check in store whether your favourite product is available in your nearest store, but none of the stores listed are outside of New Zealand,” Hardie told RNZ.
Researchers conducted test purchases on the .com domain and found orders arrived at domestic addresses within three days. Postage documentation showed the items were dispatched directly from Auckland, according to RNZ.
The investigation also examined an associated Instagram account, shosha.global, which was linked directly from the .com website. Under the June 2025 legislation, displaying vaping products on social media constitutes an offense, RNZ reported.
Account information showed the page was based in New Zealand, and posts featured local warning labels. Hardie and other researchers analyzed 67 posts published between June 17, 2025, and May 2026, finding that 46.3% featured bilingual te reo Māori warning labels, 5.9% referenced Matariki, and 40.3% displayed New Zealand-specific nicotine concentration restrictions, according to RNZ.
“All of those things sort of put together indicate that these tools are being used as a workaround for this company to continue promoting their products in full view, but sit outside of the law,” Hardie told RNZ.
When RNZ attempted to access the Instagram account on November 6—two days after the research was released—the page had been taken down, RNZ reported. A Ministry of Health spokesperson said that officials were reviewing whether their position on the shosha.com website had changed, though the agency had no prior knowledge of the shosha.global Instagram account.
Between June 2025 and July 2026, the ministry issued 71 infringement notices for advertising breaches on websites, RNZ reported. Ministry officials said that enforcement focuses primarily on New Zealand-registered companies.
“New Zealand law applies to a website that is accessible in New Zealand. However, where a company is registered overseas, there are practical and jurisdictional challenges when investigating and taking enforcement action,” a ministry spokesperson told RNZ.
Hardie argued that the situation demonstrated weaknesses in current legislation, telling RNZ that authorities appeared to be perpetually playing catch-up with corporate adaptations.
“One of the first things that we should be looking at is strengthening our laws and making sure we’re not always playing catch up to whatever the companies are doing at the time. We’ve seen them adapt to every regulation and law that we put up and then we have to keep changing it,” Hardie told RNZ.
Shosha did not respond to requests for comment from RNZ.
