[ad_1]
The Australian government says it wants to phase out the use of e-cigarettes in an effort to “reduce smoking and eliminate vaping” in one of the country’s most sweeping tobacco regulation moves.
The proposal, announced Tuesday, would ban all disposable vapes; stopping the importation of nonprescription vape; require “pharmaceutical-like packaging”; reduce the concentration and amount of nicotine; and limit certain flavors, colors and ingredients.
The federal government will also work with states and territories to stop the sale of vapes in convenience stores and other retail settings “while also making it easier to obtain prescriptions for legitimate therapeutic uses,” the Department of Health and Aged Care said in a statement. .
Nicotine vapes are currently only available with a prescription in Australia, but they are thriving on the black market, especially among young people. While the contours of the proposal are still tentative, Mark Butler, the health minister, says the long-term goals are clear.
“I want vaping to return to the purpose for which it was invented, which is a therapeutic product to help long-term smokers quit,” Mr Butler said in a speech at the National Press Club of Australia on Tuesday. “We were promised this was a way out of smoking, not a way into smoking. That’s what it is. That’s what it’s been shamelessly sold and promoted.”
In particular, Mr. Butler said, the government wants to “stop the idea that this is a recreational product, but primarily a recreational product for children.”
“Beating that market is what I want to do,” he said.
Many health regulators, including the Food and Drug Administration in the United States, consider e-cigarettes generally beneficial because they offer adult smokers an alternative to traditional cigarettes, which cover the lungs in tar. But regulators don’t account for young people becoming addicted to nicotine after being hooked on the fruity taste of vaping, or for the mysterious and life-threatening vaping-related illnesses that plague many young users. The FDA has begun to crack down on its own in recent years.
Mr Butler said the Australian government had no plans to ban or phase out smoking in the year of birth, as New Zealand did recently when it banned the sale of cigarettes to everyone born after 2008.
In a statement, the government called the strategy a “new national framework” to reduce daily smoking rates in Australia.
Australian Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, will deliver the federal government’s annual operating budget to Parliament on May 9. It will include 737 million Australian dollars, or nearly $492 million, in funding for the initiative.
The budget will call for a 5 percent annual increase in the tobacco tax, effective September 1, generating an additional 3.3 billion Australian dollars, or about 2.2 billion dollars, in revenue over four years. Mr Butler said on Tuesday the government would invest the money in the country’s health system, including a new national lung cancer screening program, cancer treatment services for Indigenous groups and programs to reduce vaping and smoking among Australians.
But the focus of the initiative, Mr Butler said, was “killing major health risks for younger generations of Australians.”
“We all know this when we interact as parents or uncles and aunts with young school students – it just evolves, especially during Covid,” he said. “We have to close industries, markets that have been allowed to grow, even though they shouldn’t.”
But Nicole Lee, an adjunct professor at the National Drug Research Institute at Curtin University, said she was not convinced that this approach would have the impact on the black market that regulators hoped for. A shortage of primary care doctors means people looking for a prescription to vape are less likely to get one, putting a strain on an already exploding black market.
“We want to see access reduced and we want to see people being able to use it to quit smoking,” he said. “Quasi banning means the black market will flourish and young people have more access, not less access.”
Yan Zhuang contribute reports.
[ad_2]
Source link