Vape crackdown looms as Therapeutic Goods Administration closes submissions

Plain packaging and warnings on vapes, restrictions on flavours and colours and cracking down on imports and influencers have all been touted as possible solutions to Australia’s e-cigarette crisis.

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Nicole Higgins says vaping products containing nicotine were particularly concerning to GPs. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ian Currie

Plain packaging and warnings on vapes, restrictions on flavours and colours and cracking down on imports and social media influencers have been touted as possible solutions to the e-cigarette crisis.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has released its submission to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which finished a seven-week consultation process on overhauling the current regulatory model.

The RACGP also wants to scrap the personal importation scheme, which allows vapers with a nicotine prescription to order the chemical from overseas, and mandate fines for vapes that contain nicotine but do not disclose the substance on their packaging.

President Nicole Higgins said vaping products containing nicotine were particularly concerning to GPs and that the RACGP would also like to see restrictions on flavours and colours introduced as well as warnings about poisons and burns.

“Many vaping products sold as non-nicotine do, in fact, contain nicotine,” said Dr Higgins. “This makes it clear that getting people addicted is a core part of Big Nicotine’s marketing strategy. It is also a strategy that ­attempts to sidestep efforts to improve health through questionable and furtive marketing, such as use of influencers to create a new generation of nicotine users.”

Vapes containing nicotine can be easily purchased from tobacconists and convenience stores around Australia despite laws introduced by the former Coalition government in October 2021 that require customers to have a prescription.

The Australian Medical Association said in its submission that e-cigarettes were a “gateway to smoking” that carried significant health risks and should only be prescribed as a quit-smoking aid as a last resort.

AMA president Stephen Robson said some vapes contained lung-damaging chemicals such as vitamin E acetate and diacetyl and the AMA wanted similar regulation to tobacco introduced, which included health warnings and plain packaging. It also wants to reduce the allowed concentration of nicotine from 100mg/ml to 20mg/ml and limit the flavours and volume of nicotine that can be prescribed and imported.

Legalise Vaping Australia said in its submission that e-cigarettes should be sold as adult consumer products similar to models in New Zealand, the UK, the European Union, Canada and the US.