Editor’s view: Aggressive action needed to tackle vaping scourge

Record seizures of illegal vaping products highlight how Australian laws restricting the purchase of e-cigarettes – while needed and welcomed – do not go far enough, writes the editor.

Vapes confiscated by Queensland principals.

Record seizures of illegal vaping products highlight how Australian laws restricting the purchase of e-cigarettes – while needed and welcomed – do not go far enough.

If we are to tackle the rising scourge of vaping among young people, the same aggressive, targeted public health campaigns that have led to plunging smoking rates are needed.

As we report today, Australia Border Force officials in the past year seized more than 130,000 illegal vapes in Brisbane alone – the highest detection anywhere in the country.

The rate of vaping among Queensland teens is alarming.

It has more than doubled since 2017, with 35.6 per cent of school students aged 12-17 now admitting to having sampled e-cigarettes.

At the same time, the rate of school aged students smoking had dropped to just 2.9 per cent – down from 29.8 per cent in 1996.

The federal government from July 1 this year introduced world-leading laws that meant vapes containing nicotine could only be legally sold by pharmacies to people who have a prescription from their doctor.

But the effectiveness of these laws is questionable when organised crime gangs are flooding Australia with illicit vapes.

Anti-tobacco health campaigns worked because they were real, they were evidence-based and they were in your face (who could forget the infamous black sponge commercial from the 1980s).

Over decades, we successfully took smoking from normal to uncommon.

Using lessons learned from taking on tobacco, we can do the same to the vaping crisis.

Originally published as Editor’s view: Aggressive action needed to tackle vaping scourge