Australia becomes first country to ban the sale of vapes outside pharmacies

SYDNEY – Vapes in Australia can now be bought only at pharmacies as part of a world-first crackdown that came into effect on July 1 and includes a ban on most flavours.

As part of new laws that have been widely welcomed by health experts, vapes – or electronic vapourisers – will need to be sold in plain colours and packaging, and cannot be advertised or locally manufactured.

Flavours will be restricted to tobacco, menthol and mint in an attempt to ban “bubble gum” flavours that are particularly popular with younger users.

The move, which follows Australia’s world-leading efforts to crack down on cigarettes, will make it more difficult to buy vapes, particularly as many pharmacies say they do not want to become over-the-counter vape sellers.

Many pharmacies currently sell vapes to people who have been prescribed them by doctors as part of an attempt to quit smoking.

Australian Health Minister Mark Butler said on July 1 that vaping was a “public health nemesis”, warning that any convenience or tobacco store that continues to sell vapes will face fines of up to A$2 million (S$1.8 million) and jail sentences of up to seven years.

He announced the creation of a new government post – the Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarette Commissioner – who will oversee efforts to target black market sales and supply of nicotine products such as vapes and cigarettes.

“Vaping is a tool from Big Tobacco deliberately designed to recruit a new generation to nicotine addiction,” Mr Butler told reporters.

The Pharmacy Guild of Australia, the country’s peak body for pharmacies, and several major pharmacy chains, criticised the new laws, saying they do not want to sell products that may be harmful to buyers who do not have a prescription.

But the guild said it had no guidelines or protocols for dispensing “unregulated substances with no established therapeutic benefit”.

“Pharmacists are healthcare professionals and community pharmacies do not want to supply this potentially harmful, highly addictive product without a prescription,” the guild’s national vice-president, Mr Anthony Tassone, said in a statement on June 26.

“When we don’t know the long-term effects of vapes on patient safety, how can a pharmacist make an informed decision?”

Mr Tassone told The Straits Times on July 1 that he did not want to comment further and referred to his statement.

Mr Butler said it was up to individual pharmacies whether they choose to sell vapes to people who do not have prescriptions.

Australia already has notoriously tough laws targeting smoking.

In 2012, it became the first country in the world to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes, requiring cartons to have drab colours and gruesome pictorial health warnings. The move was opposed by the tobacco industry but has since been widely adopted internationally.

The government has also imposed hefty taxes, which have lifted the price of a standard packet of 25 cigarettes to about A$50.

These measures have led to a sharp decline in the number of smokers. According to government data, the proportion of people aged 14 and over who smoke daily was 8 per cent in 2023, down from 24 per cent in 1991.

But the vaping has increased, with 7 per cent of people describing themselves as current users of vapes in 2023, compared with 2.5 per cent in 2019.

About half of these people used vapes daily. And vapes have become particularly popular among young people, with about 18 per cent of those aged 15 to 17 saying they had used a vape at least once.

More than 20 countries have banned vaping and more than 50 have banned sales to minors, such as those aged under 18.

In Singapore, despite vaping being illegal, it is also on the rise. The purchase, possession or use of a vape attracts fines of up to $2,000 per offence.

Professor Simon Chapman, an Australian public health expert who spent years helping to expose the role of global tobacco firms in covering up the effects of tobacco and in targeting marketing at young people, told ST that Australia’s new measures were “quite radical” and should help to prevent young people from taking up vaping.

He said he was concerned that vaping was relatively new and could prove – like cigarettes – to have devastating public health effects in the coming decades.

“Vaping is very addictive and it is very difficult for people to get off vapes, including kids,” he added. “You are exposing yourself to things that you are pulling deep into your lungs and which your lungs were not evolved to receive. We have no idea what the long-term consequences of vaping will be.”

Most health experts backed the new anti-vaping laws, but criticised the government’s decision to weaken an earlier proposal that would have required vapes to be sold by prescription only.

The new measures make vapes prescription-only from July 1 until Oct 1 only, following a compromise deal with the Greens, whose support was required to pass the law.

From Oct 1, only young people under the age of 18 will need a prescription. The Greens said they did not want an outright ban because they do not believe individuals should be “criminalised” for using a vape.

Prof Chapman, an emeritus professor at Sydney University, said the role of vapes in helping people to end nicotine addiction had been “overhyped”, noting that about 90 per cent of smokers who use vapes do not end up quitting smoking.

The new laws also impose limits on nicotine concentration.

The government will review the new vaping laws in three years.