Young Australians throwing away illegal vapes as prices soar

Vaping rates are falling among young adults and high schoolers, prompting Health Minister Mark Butler to claim Australia’s world-first vape ban is working.

Prices for the fruity-flavoured puffers illegally sold at tobacco and corner stores have risen from about $25 to between $50 and $60 since the middle of last year when Labor introduced one of the strictest public health measures of its term by banning vapes – they are now only legally purchased as anti-smoking aids at pharmacies – and clamping down on importation.

Health Minister Mark Butler during a press conference on vaping restrictions earlier this year.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Officials have since seized 8 million illegal vapes at the border, mostly manufactured in China and sold under popular brand names Alibarbar and iGet. While they can still be bought, the higher prices and reduced supply has combined with school-level warnings to bring down smoking rates.

The rate of vaping has dropped from 20 to 18 per cent among 18-24-year-olds from early 2023 to now, according to new data from the Cancer Council’s Generation Vape report, the most comprehensive survey on vaping in Australia.

Among 14-17-year-olds, the rate of vaping was rapidly rising in recent years but started to drop in the last quarter of last year, falling from 17 per cent to 15.5 per cent. The respondents are asked about their experiences in a mix of surveys and long-form interviews funded by the council and government agencies.

That drop-off among teens is backed by data from health authorities in South Australia, which showed vaping rates in the 30-to-59 age group had dropped by about half from 2023 to this year, and by about one-third for South Australians aged between 15 and 29.

The number of schoolkids in SA being suspended for vaping declined by 50 per cent from the first term of 2023 when there were 388 suspensions compared to 186 in term four last year.

“The vaping legislation has really changed the game,” said Alecia Brooks of the Cancer Council.

“When it is really easy to get your hands on a product, that signals to a young person that it must not be that bad for you.

“Because it is now being talked about in the media, because there have been public education campaigns, all of that works together to create an environment where young people make a better choice.”

Another encouraging sign in the Cancer Council’s report was that 60 per cent of young people said they wanted to quit vaping in the next month, up from about 30 per cent.

Brooks said this proved young people were thinking, “this is not good for me and I don’t need this in my life any more”.

But the task of smoking prevention is far from over because tobacco wars are still raging in major cities as gangs battle to profit off vapes. Pharmacies, now permitted to sell non-flavoured vapes, are also reluctant to sell them, leaving cigarette smokers with fewer options to quit as illegal tobacco sales soar.

Butler has repeatedly said that weeding out vaping would not happen overnight, and his government’s intention was to target the crisis of youth vaping.

“Our world-leading vaping reforms are working,” he told this masthead. “Making sure young Australians didn’t get addicted to vapes was always our focus. Young Australians were sold a furphy. They were told vapes were a safe alternative to smoking, but that was all a ruse from big tobacco.

Coalition frontbencher Anne Ruston.Credit: AAP

“The sorts of chemicals used to produce weed killer, nail polish remover, used to de-ice runways at airports [are used in vapes].

“We also know vaping had become a gateway to cigarette smoking. Terrifyingly, 12-year-olds who vape are 29 times more likely to take up cigarette smoking.

“We’ve choked off supply at the border, seizing almost 8 million vapes. We’re under no illusions around the enormity of this task. We’re taking on big tobacco on the one hand, and organised crime on the other, which continues to use vapes and illicit tobacco as a ready source of revenue to fund all their other criminal activities.”

However, Coalition health spokesman Senator Anne Ruston claimed the government had taken far too long to crack down on the black market, which she said was still thriving, pointing to the 130 firebombings of tobacco stores in Melbourne in recent years.

The federal budget is short billions of dollars because tobacco excise revenue falls well short of estimates because of the surge in illegal “chop chop” tobacco. The Coalition announced before the election in May that it would tax vapes and create a regulated industry as exists in other countries, adding an estimated $3.6 billion to the budget over four years.

Labor wanted to ban vapes entirely before the Greens used its power in the Senate to push the government to allow pharmacies to sell them.

“Reducing the rates of vaping in Australia, particularly amongst our children, is an important public health outcome that we all support, but the government must ensure that they are not playing straight into the hands of organised crime syndicates who are massively profiting from the sale of illegal vapes,” Ruston said.

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