E-cigarettes: Vape crackdown for Australia: flavour bans, plain packaging and imports crackdown

A massive crackdown on vaping will be announced in the coming weeks as the Health Minister tries to contain a ‘new generation of nicotine addicts’.

The regulations include a ban on flavors, simple packaging similar to cigarettes, and tougher import restrictions to tackle illegal smuggling into the country.

Health Minister Mark Butler said vapes are clearly marketed to children and dismissed the idea that most do not contain nicotine as “utter horse”.

He says e-cigarettes are clearly aimed at kids with flavors like bubble gum, and research shows that one in six high school students have tried vaping.

The full list of schemes will be confirmed in the May budget.

Mr Butler says e-cigarettes are clearly aimed at children and it is ‘horsesh**’ to believe the majority of them contain no nicotine

Mr Butler said he would take the strongest possible measures to avoid normalizing vapes in schools.

“The school authorities are crazy, it’s not just high schools – it’s primary school,” Mr. Butler told news.com.

“These stores are operating under the fiction that what they are selling are non-nicotine vapes, and we know that is complete nonsense”

“Any time someone does a random test of these things, they overwhelmingly turn out to be nicotine vapes, and you have to ask the question, why wouldn’t someone want to use a vape that doesn’t contain nicotine?

“I mean, that’s the whole point of them — to get that hit.”

Mr Butler said he would welcome recommendations from the Therapeutic Goods Administration to help prevent more minors from taking up the habit.

“The TGA has recommended pharmaceutical packaging. So not this pretty one with pink unicorns on it. It would be pure in taste,’ Mr Butler said.

Currently, nicotine vapes can only be legally purchased from a pharmacy by someone holding a prescription, but an alarming number of convenience stores and tobacconists sell them without hesitation without hesitation.

Specialty stores are also popular across the country, with rows of colorful vapes openly displayed upon entry.

“This is such an insidious product that the tobacco industry has purposely designed to create a new generation of nicotine addicts,” he said.

“It fully explains why the under-25s are the only cohort in the population where the number of smokers is on the rise. That’s exactly what the industry wanted.

“One in 70 people in their 50s has vaped. One in four people my daughter’s age has vaped.”

New research has shown that people who vape are three times more likely to take up cigarettes.

Other reports cited by Mr Butler revealed that more than 50 children under the age of four have been poisoned by nicotine ingestion in the past year.

Convenience stores are openly displaying colorful vape options and appealing flavours, which Mr Butler says are ‘insidiously’ aimed at children

The scale of the crackdown will be revealed in the budget, and Mr Butler said equal attention should be paid to our borders.

“We were supposed to take some action at the border, which Greg Hunt tried to do to his credit, but then he was rolled through his party room in I think 10 days.

“Because they don’t come in as shipping containers labeled vapes, they come in, in pretty small boxes, and that’s really where the states and territories come in.”

Mr Butler said one difficulty in tackling imports was the right regulatory framework, which would allow individual states and territories to enforce them.

“I think what’s happened is the Commonwealth has said there’s nothing we can do about the fact that this has just gone crazy because it’s a state and territory policing issue.

“Then the states and territories say why should we divert resources from capturing robbers and murderers in vapes when the borders are just all open?

“So we need to take action at the border. States must take action on policing and retail. I think there is enthusiasm to do that.’