Non-prescription flavoured vapes to be banned under new federal government rules

Vaping products have killed toddlers, hospitalised young people and caused nicotine poisoning. Now the government is cracking down on e-cigarettes – see what’s planned.

Non-prescription flavoured vapes will be banned and the amount of nicotine allowed in the prescription-only products will be slashed under a major crackdown to be announced by the Federal Government.

Vapes will have to be packaged like other pharmaceuticals and carry warning labels under sweeping reforms to be announced by Health Minister Mark Butler on Tuesday.

And prescription vapes used as a smoking cessation aid will need to be tested by the nation’s medicines watchdog the Therapeutic Goods Administration and meet new quality standards before they can be sold.

Single use vapes will also be prohibited under measures to be announced in next week’s Federal Budget which will include $234 million to wind back the harm caused by vaping products.

“Vaping was sold to governments and communities around the world as a therapeutic product to help long-term smokers quit,” Mr Butler will tell the National Press Club on Tuesday.

“It was not sold as a recreational product – especially not one for our kids. But that is what it has become: the biggest loophole in Australian history,” he will say.

The crackdown comes after a public consultation led by the Therapeutic Goods Administration last year that received over 4,000 submissions.

Health Ministger Mark Butler. Picture: Martin Ollman/Getty Images)

Schools, parents, doctors and public health experts have been calling for reform as a major black market in vapes has placed children’s health at risk.

One in every 6 teenagers aged 14-17 has vaped and 1 in four people aged 18-24 has vaped.

Mr Butler said vaping had become the number one behavioural issue in high schools and was becoming widespread in primary schools.

Victoria’s poisons hotline has taken 50 calls about children under 4 becoming sick from ingesting or using a vape in the last 12 months.

In 2021 vapes became prescription only products that could only be used as a quit smoking aid.

However, there is a surging black market in flavoured vapes which claim not to contain nicotine (most of these products do have nicotine in them).

Four out of five teens who were surveyed by the George Institute for Global Health said they found it easy or somewhat easy to buy them in retail stores.

Vapes come in all sorts of flavours. Picture: Supplied

Multiple chemical analyses of the products have found vapes contain 200 toxic chemicals that do not belong in the lungs, “the same chemicals you’ll find in nail polish remover and weed killer” Mr Butler will reveal.

John Trezise, Head of External Affairs British American Tobacco Australia, said there was a misconception about what was driving vaping products onto Australian streets.

He said it was “simply untrue” companies like British American Tobacco were responsible.

“BAT complys with all Australian vaping laws and as such we have never supplied a single nicotine vaping product for sale at retail level in Australia,” he said.

Companies that existed “at best only on paper” were importing vaping products into Australia, he said.

A recent Australian National University study has found rather than being a smoking cessation aid vapes increase the rate of smoking.

Vapers are three times as likely to take up smoking, “which explains why under 25s are the only cohort in the community currently recording an increase in smoking rates” Mr Butler will say.

The Budget will include $63m for an advertising campaign to discourage Australians from taking up smoking and vaping and encourage more people to quit.

A further $140 million will be spent on the Tackling Indigenous Smoking (TIS) program which will be extended and also widened to reduce vaping among First Nations people.

Originally published as Non-prescription flavoured vapes to be banned under new federal government rules