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Australia said on Tuesday it would ban recreational vaping and tighten other aspects of its e-cigarette laws in the biggest crackdown on the tobacco industry in more than a decade to try to stem an alarming rise in teenage vaping.
The government aims to ban all disposable vapes, which are often fruity, ban the import of vapes without a prescription and limit nicotine levels, aiming to sell vapes only to help smokers quit.
“As with smoking, Big Tobacco has taken other addictive products, wrapped them in shiny packaging and added flavor to create a new generation of nicotine addicts,” Health Minister Mark Butler said in a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra.
Vaping, generally considered a safer alternative to smoking cigarettes and useful in helping smokers quit, involves heating a nicotine-containing liquid called an e-cigarette and turning it into a vapor that the user inhales.
But research shows the potential for long-term harm from addictive e-cigarettes.
Under the new rules, vapes will only be sold in pharmacies and will require “pharmaceutical-type” packaging. Disposable vapes that are popular with young people will also be banned.
Although a prescription is required to buy nicotine vapes in Australia, lax border enforcement and a growing illegal market mean they are available in other shops and stores.
Major vape maker Philip Morris welcomed the crackdown on its stores.
“Nicotine vaping products sold at corner stores are always illegal,” said a spokesperson for the company.
“We have been urging enforcement against this illegal product for several years and hope this will now happen.”
Butler said vaping had become a recreational product in Australia, mostly marketed to teenagers and young adults, who were three times more likely to smoke.
“It’s a product targeted at children, sold alongside lollies and chocolates,” Butler said. “Vaping is now the number one behavioral problem in high schools. And it’s spreading to elementary schools as well.”
Health Canada lags behind proposed regulations
The news from Down Under comes as doctors and lawyers in Canada accuse the federal government of being “missed in action” on the regulation of vaping products.
Two years after proposing limits on e-cigarette flavors to make the product less appealing to young people, Health Canada has taken little action and the country still has some of the highest youth vaping rates in the world.
Teen vaping rates doubled between 2016 and 2019, when 20 percent of students reported using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days, up from 10 percent in 2016-17, according to Canadian Student Tobacco, Alcohol and Drug Survey.
At Canadian Tobacco and Nicotine Survey 2021 which revealed that 13 percent of teenagers aged 15 to 19 said they vaped at least once in the past month, compared to only four percent of adults aged 25 or older.
Health Canada told CBC News in a new statement that it’s still reviewing feedback from a public consultation on regulating flavored vapes, which has “attracted a lot of attention” — and is due to end in September 2021.
In the absence of federal regulations, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI and Quebec all have banned the sale of flavored e-cigarettes.
Health Canada makes it new regulations regarding the amount of nicotine allowed in electronic cigarettes, setting a maximum nicotine concentration of 20 milligrams per milliliter from July 2021.
‘Same type of image as children’s breakfast cereal’
In Australia, doctors are backing a crackdown on vaping but are calling on the government to do more to limit the number of young people taking it up.
“Nicotine vaping products are being sold with colorful flavors and we’ve also seen products featuring the same types of images as children’s breakfast cereals, including cartoon characters,” said Nicole Higgins, president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.
About 22 per cent of Australians aged 18 to 24 have used an electronic cigarette or vaping device at least once, last year’s data showed.
The federal budget, due out next week, will include $234 million ($213 million Cdn) for measures to protect against harm caused by smoking and vaping.
Australia has one of the toughest anti-smoking laws in the world.
In 2012, the country became the first country to force cigarette manufacturers to abandon different and colorful brands and sell their products in uniform packages.
Cigarette companies are quickly switching to e-cigarettes that offer a variety of flavors and create designs that target a new generation of users.
Butler said the government had no plans to follow New Zealand’s ban on tobacco sales for future generations, but said tobacco taxes would be raised by five per cent a year for the next three years to curb sales.
Some countries have tried to restrict vaping and some see it as a good way to get smokers to kick the habit.
Britain said in April that up to one million smokers will be encouraged to change cigarettes to vape, in a world-first, offering financial incentives to pregnant women and providing e-cigarette starter kits to help people quit smoking.
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