Record numbers of Victorians are vaping with school nurses being trained to fight scourge

Calls are growing for a crackdown on vape retailers amid an alarming spike in young women adopting the dangerous habit.

Victorians are vaping in record numbers, with an alarming spike in young women taking up the harmful habit, a new report by Cancer Council Victoria has found.

Eighteen to 30-year-olds now account for more than half of all e-cigarette users in Victoria (54 per cent), with health experts warning the state faces a slow-motion train wreck.

The Victorian Smoking & Health Survey released this week also found a concerningly large uptick in the number of young females, aged 18-24, vaping on e-cigarettes – up from 2.8 per cent in 2018-19 to 15.2 per cent in 2022.

And the survey found there has been an almost five-fold increase in the number of people who did not smoke but now vape.

Victorians aged 18-30 make up the largest group of e-cigarette users. Picture: Toby Zerna

So concerned are health experts with the report’s new data that Quit, together with Cancer Council Victoria and VicHealth has called on the Victorian government to introduce a retail licensing scheme that will identify, deter and penalise retailers breaking the law by selling harmful e-cigarette products to minors and adults.

Alarmingly, almost three quarters (72.6 per cent) of those surveyed purchased vaping products illegally from retailers across the state.

In Victoria it is illegal to sell e-cigarette devices or accessories containing nicotine to adults without a prescription. It is illegal to sell any e-cigarette products to under 18s.

Quit’s director Dr Sarah White said the ready availability of illegal e-cigarettes threatened to undo decades of success and government investment in tobacco control and calls to Quitline showed many people, including schoolchildren, were struggling to quit vaping. She said Quitline counsellors were reporting children and adults were reaching out for advice on how to kick the habit.

Vapes on sale beside tobacco in Melbourne.

“The Victorian Smoking & Health Survey highlights we have an estimated 77,200 never smokers reporting they are currently using e-cigarettes, and more than half e-cigarette users are vaping nicotine,” Dr White said.

She said it was particularly concerning at a time when, as a society, we are trying to reduce preventable ill-health.

Dr White said it took more than three decades to work out the health impacts of smoking and even if vaping had half of those risks, it presented a preventable death and disease rate that Victorians should not be happy with.

The survey’s results have ignited calls from VicHealth’s CEO to label e-cigarettes a danger to the community, and the three organisations will ask the government to do more to stop unlawful imports.

The report found:

VICTORIA has more than 300,000 e-cigarette users;

REGULAR use has more than doubled from the first survey in 2018-19 to 2022 (1.6% to 3.5%);

MORE than half (58.3%) of past-year e-cigarette users said they usually vaped nicotine; and

BRICKS-and-mortar stores, such as tobacconists and dedicated vaping shops, were the most common place of purchase of e-cigarette devices (75.1%) compared to online vendors.

Quit, Cancer Council Victoria and VicHealth all want a scheme to deter retailers selling vapes illegally. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Dr White said there was a huge level of frustration among public health practitioners that the ready availability of e-cigarettes was risking a reversal of Victoria’s hard-fought, record low levels of smoking and therefore the health of future generations.

“It is ridiculous that retailers can import and sell these addictive and illegal devices for profit, and it will be the taxpayer who has to fund the clean-up,” Dr White said.

Dr Sandro Demaio, CEO of VicHealth, said he was concerned about the impending health impacts, as e-cigarettes contain dozens of toxic chemicals and heavy metals which can cause cancer and damage the brain and lungs.

“E-cigarettes present a very real danger to our community – especially for children and young adults,” he said.

School nurses trained to tackle scourge

Nurses are being trained in Victorian schools to help deal with vaping scourge that is sweeping classrooms across the state.

The Herald Sun can reveal about 100 school nurses from government and non-government schools this week attended a webinar delivered by Quit Victoria to discuss the health implications of e-cigarette use and referral pathways to support young people to quit.

It can also be revealed that desperate parents are calling the QUIT helpline to speak to counsellors about their children being addicted to nicotine vapes.

The support calls to counsellors included parents and other family members revealing that vaping was an “endemic” in schools, with kids selling vapes in the gym change rooms.

Other shocking incidents include a 15-year-old teen revealing he was “strongly addicted to vapes” and that 80 per cent of his friends smoke vape.

School nurses are being trained to deal with the vaping scourge in classrooms.

In another example, a teacher was forced to call the helpline after a grade 6 student was caught vaping nicotine before and after school.

A principal from a secondary school in Melbourne’s east told the Herald Sun the problem continued to be “out of control” in Victorian schools.

“We have had to install vape detectors in our school bathrooms because it’s that bad,” he said.

“We confiscate at least 10 vapes a day and we find used vapes scattered around the school, it’s just out of control.”

A 22-year-old Melbourne woman, who did not want to be named, started vaping three years ago to try and quit smoking.

But she said she now uses vapes more frequently than she did cigarettes, and many of her friends who never smoked have taken up vaping.

“I know some kids in high school that are full-time vapers,” she said.

“Absolutely everyone I know vapes.

“Even if they don’t have one, they will have some of someone else’s.

“But when we used to smoke, there were some people who would say ‘no, I’m absolutely not smoking’. That’s not there anymore.”

She knows it’s unhealthy but said it’s difficult to quit when she is surrounded by vaping and had no idea it was illegal for stores to sell nicotine vapes to her without a doctor’s prescription.

“I could get them so easily I thought surely this can’t be illegal,” she said.

Education Minister Natalie Hutchins said: “Smoking and vaping is banned in all schools in Victoria – including within four metres of any school entrance.”

“Schools take any incidents of vaping on schools extremely seriously,” she said.

Earlier this month, Koo Wee Rup Secondary College parents were sent a letter saying school wide toilets had been locked, with students asked to “request an access card to use the toilet” due to complaints of vaping and other anti-social behaviour at recess and lunchtime.

A recent Herald Sun investigation revealed dozens of tobacconists in Victoria were thumbing their noses at the law to such an extent that they were openly selling illegal vaping products to children as young as 12 who are in their school uniforms.