This time, attention is being drawn to the decision to make free vape starter kits available through stop-smoking services around the country, as a way of helping adults quit smoking.
This began from the start of this month but, as we have come to expect from this minister, details are scarce.
The move is part of the government’s Getting to Smokefree 2025 action plan released last year which Ms Costello described as a "reinvigoration" of efforts.
Ms Costello is confident the plan’s focus on reducing smoking uptake, increasing quit attempts, improving access to quit support, and supporting people to stay smokefree will achieve the goal of 80,000 people quitting smoking this year.
Public health advocates are sceptical. The Annual Health Survey shows in 2023-24 there was little movement on the prevalence of daily smoking from the previous year.
While Ms Costello says the free vapes will be covered by the existing $24 million Smokefree budget, if there is an estimate of how much money this initiative might cost, and how many people are expected to use it, she has not shared it.
Ms Costello said the starter kits were already being used by some smoking cessation services, who were funding them themselves in some cases, but it was not universal.
She sees the kits as a way of getting people through the door of quitting services.
While media coverage of the issue has referred to vaping starter kits, the action plan shows it is more than that. Those issued with them will be able to get access to free vapes by returning to the stop-smoking service, the idea being this will encourage them to maintain access to behavioural support to quit smoking.
It is not clear what controls will be in place to ensure those seeking the free vapes are smokers and not addicted vapers seeking a steady free supply.
Vape-Free Kids New Zealand is also keen to know if any safeguards are being put in place to stop these free vapes getting into the hands of children.
(The Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora website shows nine quit programmes are offering products from a variety of suppliers without further details.)
Both Vape-Free Kids and the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation are concerned vapes are being regarded as a therapeutic product but are not classed as a medicine in New Zealand or regulated as a medical device by Medsafe.
They have not been approved for smoking cessation by the World Health Organisation or the United States Food and Drug Administration either.
Cessation tools such as nicotine replacement patches, lozenges and gums have been approved by Medsafe and can be prescribed.
The lack of rigour and transparency around the process for the provision of free vapes is not good enough.
While vaping may be less harmful than smoking tobacco, it is not harmless.
There is also debate about its usefulness as a quitting tool, with many smokers developing a dual smoking and vaping habit.
The WHO position is that "e-cigarettes as consumer products have not been proven to be effective for cessation at the population level. Instead, alarming evidence on adverse population health effects is mounting".
It says where countries use them in their smoking cessation strategy, they should carefully weigh national circumstances and the risk of uptake, and exhaust other proven strategies.
"The conditions under which the products are accessed should be controlled to ensure appropriate clinical conditions and the products should be regulated as medicines, rather than their sale permitted as consumer products."
That has obviously not happened here.
If the government wants us to believe its smoking cessation policies are not being influenced by Big Tobacco with its questionable narrative around the harm reduction of new products the industry is shamelessly promoting to non-smokers and children, it has a long way to go.
