The federal health minister, Mark Butler, has criticised the proliferation of vape stores, which continue to open despite reforms that will mean only pharmacies can import and sell the products in future.
“We know these vaping stores are increasingly opening in a very deliberate way just down the road from schools, because they realise that is their target consumers,” Butler told Guardian Australia.
“I can’t overstate the concern that I know parents and school communities have about this public health menace of vaping. These vape stores are selling a product that is deliberately designed to recruit a new generation to nicotine addiction.”
The opening of more stores selling vapes was an issue raised by the independent MP Sophie Scamps, who recently told parliament that “a number of convenience stores that sell vapes have opened up in my electorate of Mackellar”.
“These stores are typically located close to busy school bus stops and they are selling vapes to school-age children,” she said.
While it is already illegal to buy and sell e-cigarettes or any e-liquid that contains nicotine without a doctor’s prescription, companies are skirting these regulations by labelling e-cigarettes as “nicotine-free” despite them containing nicotine.
It prompted Butler in May to announce reforms that will ban the import of nicotine and non-nicotine vapes and vape products, with only licensed pharmacists permitted to import and sell them.
Once in effect, the reforms will mean vape stores must close and other retailers will be required to get rid of all vape products.
But no start date has been set for those reforms, with the legislation still being developed in consultation with state and territory governments.
Tim Singleton Norton was surprised to see a previously vacant property directly opposite his son’s primary school being fitted out to sell vapes.
Singleton Norton lives in Darebin city council in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, and his son six-year-old Linus, attends the local school. “Many students cannot enter the school without walking directly past the store,” he said.
“Hundreds of secondary students also pass through this location to attend nearby Reservoir high school,” he said. He wrote to the health minister and local councillors to express his concerns that vape stores continued to open, citing research that showed that young people who vaped were three times as likely to go on to smoke.
“This shop in Reservoir would not be considering opening its doors now if [the owners thought] there was any real threat of government enforcement or restriction of its primary product.”
Butler said the government remains “committed to stamping out vaping and vape stores, especially ones that intentionally target their product to children”. But he said it would take time to finalise the details of legislation.
“It will take cooperation from both federal and state governments,” he said.
Raglan Maddox, an associate professor, is study director of the Tackling Indigenous Smoking Evaluation, which requires travelling throughout Australia. He said there was community concern about stores opening in rural and regional areas that he had visited.
Maddox said it was confusing people who were seeing stores open despite messages that vaping was harmful.
“A lot of people in these communities we have been speaking to are really concerned about young people taking up vaping, and it impacting their ability to be good parents. Because if you’re saying ‘vaping is bad for your health so don’t do it’, but then stores are opening in the community, it undermines their authority.
“Parenting is hard at the best of times, let alone if you’re being undermined by a multimillion-dollar industry that keeps producing and reinventing and marketing harmful products, all while engaging kids.”
The acting director of Quit, Craig Sinclair, said throughout 2022 about 5% of all new Quitline clients reported they were attempting to quit vaping. That figure sat at 6% in June 2023. Of all new clients to the Victorian Quitline, 1% were aged under 18 years and reported that they were attempting to stop vaping.
“We have serious concerns about the sales of any vaping products to children,” he said. “It’s illegal, and highly unethical.”
Do you know more? melissa.davey@theguardian.com
