A move to ban recreational vaping has sparked a furious backlash among some users – but has been welcomed by many vapers worried about the mystery chemicals they are hooked on.
Health minister Mark Butler revealed plans on Monday to bring in a sweeping ban on all disposable vapes over fears they target children and lure them into smoking.
The federal government has vowed to end the sale of vapes in retail and convenience stores, forcing all users to apply for a prescription through a doctor to use them.
It’s not yet been decided if prescription vapes will be covered by the pharmaceutical benefits scheme – which could see the cost of vapes slashed to just $30 every two months, compared to around $30 a week or more for some current vapers.
But the move, expected to be detailed in Tuesday’s Budget as part of a $93million campaign aimed at stamping out vaping and smoking, has enraged many.
‘It’s nanny state nonsense,’ fumed traffic engineer Jan Muller, as he puffed on a vape outside an office building in Sydney’s CBD on Tuesday.
‘I hate it, I absolutely hate it. I used to smoke but now cigarettes taste like poison to me. Vapes are so much better. A ban would be outrageous.’
Vapers Elizabeth Wenster, left, and Stella Esbjoernson, right, said they were concerned about what was in their vapes that made them so addictive
A move to ban vapes has sparked a furious backlash among some users – but welcomed by vapers worried about the mystery chemicals they are hooked on
LABOR’S BAN PLEDGE
Health minister Mark Butler (pictured)
Health minister Mark Butler said one in six teenagers aged between 14 and 16 and one in four Australians aged between 18 and 24 had vaped.
‘Vaping was sold to governments and communities around the world as a therapeutic product to help long-term smokers quit,’ Mr Butler said.
‘It was not sold as a recreational product – especially not one for our kids. But that is what it has become: the biggest loophole in Australian history.’
The government is planning a major crack down on black market vapes which are imported from overseas and readily available at retail outlets around the country.
Single use, disposable vapes will be banned and more doctors given the ability to prescribe prescription vapes to patients who need one to help them stop smoking cigarettes.
The new rules will also include restrictions on the flavours and colours of vapes that can be sold in Australia as well as tougher border controls.
‘The Budget will include $63million for a public health information campaign to discourage Australians from taking up vaping and smoking and encourage more people to quit,’ said Mr Butler
‘There will also be $30m invested in support programs to help Australians quit, including through enhanced nicotine cessation education and training among health practitioners.’
Another vaper raged that her habit was being targeted but smokers were still getting a free pass.
‘Why aren’t they banning cigarettes?’ said Kylie, 25, who has vaped for two years.
‘Vaping looks better, it tastes better and it doesn’t feel like it’s doing as much damage to your lungs – even though it probably is.’
But most other vapers spoken to by Daily Mail Australia said a ban couldn’t come soon enough and welcomed the government’s plan.
Each one admitted they were hopelessly addicted to their clouds of fruity smoke – and most said a ban might be the push they need to quit for good.
However almost all were shocked to discover that nicotine vapes are already banned except those issued by pharmacists on prescription.
Many importers are suspected of deliberately mislabelling vapes as nicotine-free to smuggle them into Australia, triggering the move to now ban all disposable vapes.
‘Vapes are far more addictive than cigarettes,’ said Stella Esbjoernson, 21, as she soaked up the sun in Bondi with her vape by her side.
‘You smoke much more than with cigarettes – it’s always in your hand so you’re constantly using it.’
But she was amazed to find out there was not supposed to be any nicotine in her corner shop-bought vapes.
‘If there’s no nicotine in it, why am I so addicted to it?’ she asked.
‘In that case I’m wondering why we’re doing it? What does it have in it?
‘It probably does have nicotine in it – they must just be pretending it doesn’t.’
Some vapers warned the move to ban all vapes – except those prescribed by doctors for patients trying to give up smoking – could drive the market underground.
‘If people want it, they will get it,’ said Josefina Gurtubay, 33, in Bondi.
‘It will be like drugs. Making them illegal doesn’t stop it, it just makes it more expensive.
‘People will take advantage of that and make it a big business. And then you will never know what is in your vape either because it will all be unregulated.’
Josefina Gurtubay 33, left, with friends Colomba Saez, 30, and Sergio Arze, 31, warned banning vapes may drive the market into the hands of drug dealers
The move to ban vapes, expected to be detailed in Tuesday’s Budget as part of a $93million campaign aimed at stamping out vaping and smoking, has enraged many
CBD worker Michail Schwartz, 27, said he felt healthier since giving up cigarettes and moving onto vapes – but admitted he was hooked.
‘I was smoking less before, but my lungs were wrecked by cigarettes,’ he said.
‘You really notice the difference.
‘After vaping for a few months, you feel better walking up a hill.’
He believes a ban is too heavy-handed a solution to tackle the problem of vape use by under-age schoolchildren.
Some vapes are designed to look like marker pens to allow students to hide them in their pencil case while the fruit flavours appeal to every child’s sweet tooth.
But Mr Schwartz believed it was possible to impose restrictions without imposing a ban.
‘If it was regulated heavily, sold in a chemist, flavourless and you needed to show ID to buy it – I feel like that would kind of deal with a lot of the issues without getting rid of it altogether,’ he said.
He currently uses a non-disposable vape with separately bought vape juice to control his intake.
‘The ones you get at convenience stores at the moment are really, really strong,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what they put in them.
‘The ones in the store, you have absolutely no idea what they are. It’s just a flavour but it could be anything.’
Elizabeth Wenster, 21, admitted the sweet fruit flavours of the vapes were clearly designed to tempt children.
‘The vape flavours are very important – I bought one vape with a disgusting flavour and I didn’t vape for two days until I ditched it and bought another,’ she said.
But she said in her native Sweden, schoolkids regularly suck on tobacco pouches similar to ones which have been banned in Australia over concerns of a link to mouth cancer.
‘The pouches are so common in Sweden – I was using them from the age of 17,’ she revealed.
‘You start doing it in school – my little sister’s doing it and she’s 16. It’s very popular for girls as it doesn’t make your teeth brown and it tastes like vape.’
Recruitment agent Rory Phelan, 28, vowed to quit if the ban was brought in – despite his self-confessed $120 a month addiction, going through one $30 vape a week.
‘It’s probably a good thing, really,’ he said. ‘Vaping is just so much more accessible than smoking. You can do it at home and there’s no end to it.
‘It’s not like a cigarette which starts and finishes in a few minutes. Once the vape is in your hand at home, you can just keep puffing on it all night long.
‘And it’s so addictive. I stopped for a month in January, then one stressful day in the office and I was back on it again.
‘But I don’t understand why they are just banning vaping and not cigarettes and smoking as a whole in general as well.’
Recruitment agent Rory Phelan, 28, (pictured) vowed to quit if the ban was brought in – despite his self-confessed $120 a month addiction, going through one $30 vape a week
Health minister Mark Butler revealed plans on Monday to bring in a sweeping ban on all disposable vapes over fears they target children and lure them into smoking
Annalise, 27, from Bondi, said she needed a ban to force her to kick the addiction.
‘It might make me give up as I can’t seem to do it myself,’ she admitted. ‘I just need that dopamine hit and it supplies it. Cigarettes are too expensive so I vape instead.’
But she doubted a ban would have any impact on stopping children from getting hooked on the sweet smoke.
‘Even before there is a ban, I’ve heard of kids who go to a shopping centre to meet someone there who will sell them vapes,’ she revealed.
‘The parents think they’re giving them lunch money but it’s being spent on vapes. Other sellers will sit on benches outside the schools and sell to them.
‘It won’t make any difference if vapes are banned or not – there will always be people like that who will find a way to exploit the kids by giving them what they want.’
Australia launches massive crackdown on vaping that will affect every e-cigarette user – here’s what you need to know about the changes
BY DAVID SOUTHWELL FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
The sale of flavoured vapes will been banned in Australia as part of a major crackdown on e-cigarettes.
Health Minister Mark Butler dropped the bombshell on Monday’s episode of Q+A, adding that an official announcement will come on Tuesday.
The strict laws will mean Aussies can only purchase vapes in plain packaging with a prescription at pharmacies – not convenience stores, service stations or any other shops.
‘I am determined to stamp out this public health menace because that’s what I think it genuinely is,’ Mr Butler said.
‘They should only be available in therapeutic settings, which is essentially pharmacies.
‘Only products that are pharmaceutical style plain package, plain products, they don’t have flavours only those products should come into Australia.’
As part of the major push Mr Butler is also preparing to ban disposable vapes, which are single use e-cigarettes that don’t allow refills of the liquid electronically heated to produce the inhaled vapour.
Currently vapes are available from convenience stores and tobacco outlets, as well as from online sources and come in a bewildering variety of flavours, shapes and designs.
The minister said e-cigarettes were initially promoted to governments and health regulators as a therapeutic aid for people to quit smoking.
But he claims vape producers are instead targeting children to take up the dangerous and addictive product.
‘It was not sold as a recreational product targeted at our kids but that’s what it has become,’ he said.
‘Vapes are disguised as highlighter pens, as USB sticks so that people can take them to school and it is having a significant health effect on our youngest Australians.’
He accused producers of marketing to young people by decorating vapes with pink unicorns or giving them bubblegum flavours.
‘This is a deliberate strategy by the tobacco industry to create a new generation of nicotine addicts and far from being a pathway out of cigarettes, which is what it was promoted to us as, it has become a pathway into cigarettes for young people,’ he said.
The use of vapes among young people has become a major concern for health authorities
It is estimated that over a million Australians regularly use vapes, with one in four 18 to 24-year-olds and one in six high school students having tried e-cigarettes.
The Health Minister claims vapes are now ‘the number one behavioural issue in high schools and are rapidly becoming the number one issue in primary schools’
The extent of the the federal government’s vaping crackdown will be revealed in the May federal Budget, Mr Butler said on Friday, with further details to be revealed at his Press Club address in Canberra on Tuesday.
In March a health academic argued that only pharmacies should be allowed to import vapes because other retailers, manufacturers and importers falsely label nicotine vapes, outlawed in Australia in late 2021, as nicotine-free.
Sydney University Associate Professor Becky Freeman said the legal importation of nicotine-free vapes was a loophole that needed to be closed with a complete ban imposed except for pharmacies to sell e-cigarettes that curb addiction.
Vapes are currently sold in a bewildering assortment of colours and flavours, which Mr Butler believes target children
A major concern about the flood of vapes being imported from China is that many contain unlisted toxic and cancer-causing chemicals such as formaldehyde as well heavy metals, such as nickel, tin, and lead.
Mr Butler said the Victorian Poisons Hotline had received 50 calls about kids under four swallowing vaping liquids.
The government has committed $63 million in next week’s budget to conducting a campaign to discourage Australians from vaping or smoking.
A further $30 million will be funneled to quit support programs and to training health practitioners in how to wean people off nicotine.
A separate tackling Indigenous smoking program will be widened to include vaping, costing an extra $140 million.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk