Australians back stronger regulation on vapes including a ban, study finds

Most Australian groups in a new study recommended regulations reducing the supply of vaping products, such as banning all e-cigarettes. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Australians are concerned about the widespread availability of illegal vapes and many support a ban, new research has found.

A study published in the February edition of the international medical journal BMJ Open saw researchers consult with 139 Australians aged 14-39 living in Sydney and Melbourne about vaping regulations. Interviews were conducted across 16 focus groups.

The researchers found less than half of all groups were aware of the prescription model for obtaining nicotine vaping products.

When asked what needed to be done to reduce vape use, all of the groups suggested plain packaging, health warnings, flavour restrictions and increased vape-free areas.

Most groups – predominantly those who had never vaped – also recommended supply reduction regulations, such as banning all e-cigarettes.

A senior author on the study, Assoc Prof Michelle Jongenelis from the University of Melbourne, said the focus groups were held in March 2023, before the federal government announced sweeping vaping reforms.

Yet many of the groups’ recommendations were in line with the reforms the government went on to announce.

From 1 January 2024, the importation of all disposable vapes was banned, with very limited exceptions. Further importation reforms will be implemented from March. GPs and nurse practitioners are the only legal vape prescribers, and pharmacists will become the only authorised importers and providers of vape products.

“But I think until the stores actually get shut down, people will still think that there is no regulation because they can still get vapes from anywhere,” Jongenelis said.

“Participants were saying to us: ‘Well, I don’t understand the prescription model because I can just go down to my local store and buy the product.’ The planned reforms will mean that the sale of vapes in any place other than a pharmacy will be illegal, but enforcing these laws will be critical.”

Jongenelis said the findings suggested advertising campaigns backed by the vaping industry calling on the government to abandon the reforms were simply “propaganda” that didn’t reflect public sentiment. But education about the prescription vaping model would be important, she said.

A health economist with QIMR Berghofer, Prof Louisa Gordon, conducted modelling for the Australian Health Review about the health costs attributable to vapers who subsequently take up cigarette smoking and said her findings revealed the government’s reforms were critical.

It is estimated 13% of people who vape but have never smoked eventually transition to tobacco cigarettes. This translates to more than 110,000 new Australian smokers, Gordon said.

“We wanted to understand the financial cost of that, which we estimated to be $180 million per year,” she said, required to treat respiratory diseases, cardiovascular disease and cancer.

This is in addition to the current healthcare costs of smoking-related conditions, estimated at $2.6bn each year, she said.

Published in December, the study is the first to put a cost just on the health implications of people taking up smoking after vaping.

“The government’s initiatives on cracking down on vaping will cost the government some money, but the downstream costs in savings to the health system are going to be massive,” Gordon said.

She agreed with Jongenelis that community-wide education campaigns were urgently needed to support people addicted to vapes and cigarettes.

“We really encourage people to talk to their GP and to talk to the Quitline,” Gordon said.

The chief executive of the Public Health Association of Australia, Adjunct Prof Terry Slevin, said the sentiment he was hearing from the community echoed the findings from Jongenelis’s study.

“People say it’s madness that vapes are openly sold on street corners and that it’s madness there is this widely-available form of nicotine addiction, especially given that we have no notion of the long-term effects of inhaling these products and all of chemicals that come with them,” he said.

“If the vaping industry genuinely thinks that people are going to change their vote against this government on the basis of these reforms, I have a sneaking suspicion that their political radar is 100% pointing in the wrong direction.”