The federal government will crackdown on children accessing e-cigarettes, with the regulator to consider key changes including tightening importation rules and tougher labelling laws.
As rates of teenage vaping soar, Australia’s drugs regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) will begin public consultation in four areas: changes to importation and border control laws required to stop illegal products entering Australia; pre-market assessments of vapes to create a regulated source of products for pharmacists and doctors to prescribe; labelling, advertising and flavouring of vapes that make them attractive to children; and stronger identification and regulation of nicotine-containing products.
In the meantime, the health minister, Mark Butler, announced menthol cigarettes will be banned, along with other cigarette flavours and additives.
At an event to mark 10 years since the introduction of plain-packaging legislation for tobacco products Butler said children were “paying the price” for government failures to tackle vaping.
He said children were buying and selling vapes in schools, and were even being given vapes by their parents, who mistakenly believe the products are “safe”.
But as Guardian Australia reported earlier on Wednesday, the products often contain highly addictive nicotine, including those products labelled “nicotine-free”, along with other chemicals and substances that are potentially harmful. It has led to children as young as 13 calling the Quitline for help with their addiction, and a steep rise in poisonings.
The public consultation on vaping reforms will be open until 16 January. Butler will meet that same month with state and territory health ministers to discuss how a response to vaping can be coordinated nationally.
“The former government was asleep at the wheel as rates of vaping skyrocketed,” Butler said. “Our children are paying the price.” Butler announced 11 further measures to tackle tobacco smoking, saying graphic warnings on cigarette packs are starting to lose their impact and new measures are needed.
“Australia was once a world leader on tobacco control,” he said, adding the measures would “put Australia back in a world-leading position” and would probably be “hard fought” against by tobacco.
New graphic warnings for tobacco will be created, Butler said, and for the first time the government will look at requiring warnings like “smoking kills” on every individual cigarette, and changing the colours of cigarettes to be more unappealing.
He said the appealing names of products will also be tackled, health promotion inserts will be put into every cigarette packet and advertising regulations will be updated to include vaping products.
“Principals of primary and high school students are continually telling me and my colleagues vaping is their biggest behavioural challenge that they face in their schools,” Butler said.
Dr Anthea Rhodes, a paediatrician with expertise in child development and behaviour at the Royal children’s hospital in Melbourne, said she was seeing children in year 6 who are frequently telling her they are vaping, exacerbating their other medical conditions.
“Often, they are experiencing symptoms of addiction,” she said.
Rhodes said the problem seems to have risen after the pandemic, with home schooling and public health restrictions limiting access to vapes and opportunities to buy and share them with peers.
“Certainly five years ago, this was not something that I was seeing in my practice in relation to children,” she said. “The first patient to tell me about their vaping concerns was in 2019. But what we have seen now is a rapid evolution of the industry with products made for and marketed to children and young people. And vaping has now become normalised, and very quickly.”
Rhodes now routinely asks every young patient if they vape because it was so common.
“Some patients tell me they wake up at night and reach for their vape,” she said.
“Others have told me they are worried about their upcoming year 11 and 12 exams, because they don’t know how they will get through the exam without being able to vape.
“The regulation that we have in Australia is simply not fit-for-purpose to manage this problem.”
The government’s aim with the reforms is to achieve smoking prevalence in Australia of less than 10% by 2025, and 5% or less by 2030.
But the government had work to do to dispel the myth that vaping was a risk-free, “harmless version of smoking cigarettes,” president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president, Dr Nicole Higgins, said.
“E-cigarettes are addictive and harmful products that can even prove fatal if ingested in certain amounts, something many young people are not aware of,” she said, welcoming the measures announced by Butler.
“The companies flogging these products know exactly what they are doing, they are creating flavours like candy and vanilla to entice younger people and the flavours smell and taste more pleasing than old-fashioned cigarettes.”
Tobacco control expert and member of the Australian Council On Smoking and Health, Maurice Swanson, said Butler had contributed to a “major step forward for public health and tobacco control in Australia”. But on vaping, he said Butler must “urgently” make the importation of all e-cigarettes prohibited, regardless of whether they contained nicotine.
“This regulation will empower Border Force to seize all e-cigs unless they are accompanied by a doctor’s prescription required by the TGA regulations,” he said.
