Time to snuff out illegal vaping

The expected crackdown on the rapidly growing vaping industry cannot come soon enough for the health of young Australians. In special reports on Monday, The Australian exposes the easy availability of nicotine vapes being sold illegally to some adults and to children, creating major behavioural problems in schools.

As part of the exercise, young reporter Claire Brownlie had no trouble buying nicotine vapes at six stores in Wollongong, with one shopkeeper assuring her the vape he was selling contained nicotine despite the box claiming not. “To make it so that we can actually shift them into stores, we have them in the 0 milligram boxes,” he said. Testing by the University of Wollongong confirmed the vapes contained nicotine.

Under laws introduced by the Coalition, nicotine vapes are supposedly restricted to people over 18 who buy them from a pharmacy, on prescription, with a view to quitting smoking, but tens of millions of vapes are sold from convenience stores.

The unregulated approach has proved toxic, with as may as 90 million vapes a year being imported from countries such as China, Malaysia and Indonesia. Most are laced with nicotine yet falsely sold as nicotine-free. Many are fruit flavoured to appeal to adolescents, while some are prettied up with pink unicorn designs and lights that glow when they are inhaled, and designed to look like neon-coloured highlighter pens.

The death in 2021 of 71-year-old former smoker and Queensland man Peter Hansen from a vaping-associated lung injury, EVALI, has underlined the potential risks. As Health Minister Mark Butler says, vaping has “exploded over the last couple of years’’, being sold illegally mostly to the young. In an effort to prevent a new generation being hooked on nicotine, federal and state governments are rightly looking to heavier regulation, such as plain packaging, taxes, border checks, police scrutiny and outright bans. Parents also need to be proactive.