ANGEL PARSONS, HOST: If you've bought a vape this week, how did you get your hands on it? Did you go to a doctor, get a prescription, and head to a pharmacy? Because a new law came in this week, meaning pharmacies are the only place legally allowed to sell vapes. But has that changed anything? Or are you finding you're still able to buy them as per normal?
In a moment, federal Health Minister Mark Butler will be joining us on Hack. How is this crackdown different from what we've heard in the past? If you have a question for the Minister, let me know on the text line. 0439 757 555. But first, here's Bernie Clarke. She's been finding out how these laws are playing out on the streets.
BERNIE CLARKE, REPORTER: Have you tried to buy any vapes this week?
VOXPOP: Yeah, I bought one yesterday.
VOXPOP: These days it's, um. Yeah, very expensive. It's $80 for one.
CLARKE: I've been out on the streets of Sydney this week, and my workmate Ariana's been out in Melbourne. We've both had a go at buying a vape.
CLARKE: Oh, hi. Sorry. I was like, how do I get in? Um, do you guys still vapes still?
CLARKE: Here in Sydney, I hit up shops in parts of town near unis and TAFEs. I took some voice memos as I went. Okay, so I have been in and out of two shops already. Both shop owners said they don't have any vapes. The second tobacconist told me to come back at night time. I am continuing my little journey and heading to a third tobacconist shop. Number three said no but was a bit more knowledgeable. They told me I need to see my GP for a prescription and to go to a pharmacy. My journey continues. I’m going to go suss out some other stores and see if they give me the same response. I have my hands on a watermelon mint ice vape. Shop #4 gave me a little menu without any hesitation. Okay, so three no’s and a yes.
CLARKE: In Melbourne, Ariana bought one on her first go.
ARIANA: Could I please get the “passionfruit mango lime”? Thank you so much.
ARIANA: Wow, that was so easy.
CLARKE: We also asked you how easy you found it this week to buy a vape, even though it's now legal to sell them outside a pharmacy?
VOXPOP: They're not really taking them off the shelves like they say they were.
VOXPOP: You have to get it under the counter sort of thing, and they're too expensive, so everyone's quitting.
VOXPOP: People don't care about their health as much as they care about their money, unfortunately.
CLARKE: That thing about money's coming up a lot. People reckon now it's illegal to sell vapes, the price on the technical black market will soar.
VOXPOP: I feel like more people are gonna start smoking now because a vape is like, 60 bucks or whatever. But like, you can buy a deck of cigarettes for like 15 if you know how to look.
CLARKE: All right. So what's going on here? To be fair to the government, it is only day four of this new scheme. And on day one, on Monday, the government appointed a new e-cigarette commissioner to ramp up monitoring of vape sales and vape imports.
ERIN DALE, ILLICIT TOBACCO AND E-CIGARETTE COMMISSIONER: We have already seen substantive difference.
CLARKE: Australian Border Force Assistant Commissioner Erin Dale is acting in that new role.
DALE: Australian Border Force officers at our international ports detecting vapes in record levels. And these have a slowing down effect on what is available on our markets.
CLARKE: So do experts agree? I caught up with Associate Professor Michelle Jongenelis from Melbourne Uni.
ASSOC. PROF. MICHELLE JONGENELIS, MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY: I think we need to give it time to work. Um, I think that the laws are important. I think it's better than what we had in the past.
CLARKE: Michelle Jongenelis also reckons that price spike we were hearing about will also get most people out of the market.
JONGENELIS: Now that those disposable products have been banned and, you know, potentially we're going to see an increase in the cost, it will mean that there will be some people out there for whom they are just too expensive.
CLARKE: But will it turn people to ciggies? She says that's a risk.
JONGENELIS: You know, we know that, um, that cigarettes are responsible for millions of deaths every year. For a young person to say that they will switch to smoking if they can't access vapes really speaks to the addictive nature of vapes and the fact that so many young people were manipulated by the industry.
CLARKE: So now will young vapers start quitting? Well, it depends who you talk to.
VOXPOP: But they all sell them still.
VOXPOP: People will always find a way.
VOXPOP: I was thinking of getting a prescription, but probably not. I can't be bothered.
ANGEL PARSONS, HOST: This is Hack on triple j. Bernie Clarke reporting there. Hearing from you heaps on the text line. Someone says “me and my mates have gone back to cigarettes. It costs more as well as being worse for our health.” Someone else says, “I've been to the doctor and the doctor actually denied me a prescription for vapes.” Interesting takes coming in on the text line. We're going to get into this more now. Federal Minister for Health Mark Butler joins us now. Minister, hello. Thanks so much for joining us on hack.
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Gday Angel, my pleasure.
PARSONS: Minister, as we just heard in that story, people are still buying vapes in regular stores. Why?
BUTLER: As Michelle said in your intro, these laws are still very new. They only came into effect on Monday, but they were actually only finalised on Thursday last week after a pretty significant negotiation and then debate in the Senate. And they were signed into effect on Friday by the Governor-General. So these are still pretty new.
But from Monday, the Therapeutic Goods Administration - which is the body that across the country oversees, as its name suggests, therapeutic goods and medicines and these laws - has already been starting going out to businesses with health authorities in different states, particularly in New South Wales, where we'd probably started this, visiting the businesses and just informing them, educating them and ultimately warning them about the effect of these laws.
And already we've had businesses contacting us, telling us that they understand that they're having to take the vapes off their shelves. I mean, we did, first notify businesses more than 12 months ago of our intention to do this. So it's certainly no surprise. But it's going to take a little more than four days to really see these laws sweep right through the country. But we're very deadly serious about this. This is one of the great public health scandals of recent times. And we're determined to stamp out recreational vaping.
PARSONS: Hasn't it been illegal to import vapes since something like January? Like, why are we seeing that lag? And I understand it's only come into effect this week, this new law, but why are we still seeing vapes in shops if it's been illegal since then?
BUTLER: So on the 1st of January - you're absolutely right - we put an import ban in place for disposable vapes. And since then we've seized more than 3 million vapes that have been flowing in over the borders. I mean, these are the vapes that your listeners were talking about in the introduction: the fancy flavours, they're often brightly coloured. One of our real concerns has been that they're very attractive and deliberately attractive to kids, including kids as young as primary school aged children. So we've had that ban in place, and certainly we'd been hearing well before this week that stores were finding it harder and harder to get their hands on vapes. But there were already quite a lot of vapes in the country. So yes, the supply has been diminishing over the last six months, but still stores had supply in their shops, which is borne out by your introduction.
PARSONS: We've got Adam on the text line. He says, “I got my vape at my same shop I always do. They laughed when I asked if they'd stopped selling. They just charged me double.” For stores like that, how are you going to enforce this new law? Will police be cracking down on stores like that?
BUTLER: Look, we're not going to use police. I mean, this is a health law. It's a public health law. And every state and territory have health authorities who are responsible for enforcing these sorts of public health laws. So the different states have been a big part of drafting these laws. I've been negotiating them with state and territory health ministers now for about 12 months or more. And they will, over coming weeks, start to ramp up their activity: going out to shops and where it's clear they are selling these vapes - particularly the vape stores, the stores that really only have vapes - if they're continuing to do that, I need to be really clear: they're going to be subject to very serious penalties. I mean, the fines in the laws that were passed by the Parliament last week are up to $2.2 million for the sale and the supply of vapes. And there are prison terms of up to seven years for breaching these laws. I mean, it will take some days and weeks for us to get out and be clear with vape store owners what the new laws effect is and what the potential penalties that they face if they continue to flout them will be.
But I want to be clear, I'm deadly serious about this. This is a really serious public health menace. I certainly take the view that Michelle Jongenelis, who was interviewed by you, also took: this was a deliberate strategy by Big Tobacco. They presented this to Australia and to countries right around the world as a therapeutic good that would be a real assistance to hardened smokers that have probably smoked cigarettes for decades. So middle aged people and above, who just hadn't been able to kick the habit with Nicabate and all those other therapies. And what we actually know is it's a recreational product that's deliberately aimed at children and young adults to try and recruit them to nicotine addiction
PARSONS: Well, I want to touch on cigarettes because someone on the text line is asking, “why are cigarettes legal and vapes aren't?” Uh, so I just want to like some people are saying that they're going to turn to cigarettes. Now, is that a worry for you now that vapes are going to be maybe more expensive on the black market, or people are going to have to pay to go and see the doctor?
BUTLER: We've been alive to this risk really from the get go, when we started talking about this with public health experts, doctors groups, you know, parents and school communities who are particularly concerned about this. And obviously, the last thing we want to see is people giving up vapes and moving to cigarettes. But I just want to remind your listeners that the whole purpose of these vapes, from Big Tobacco's point of view, has been to present a gateway to cigarettes anyway. I mean, young vapers have been three times more likely to take up cigarettes than people who weren't vaping. So it's already a problem that people who have been vaping are much, much more likely to move on to cigarettes.
But to deal with your question specifically, we've also at the same time been ramping up our activity around cigarettes, particularly illegal or illicit tobacco, which is also pretty rampant in some of these stores. It's relatively cheap. It's completely illegal. And we're ramping up our policing activity to try and get that off the market as well.
PARSONS: This is Hack. I'm Angel Parsons. I'm speaking with Health Minister Mark Butler about the first week of the government's vapes crackdown. And Minister, big pharmacies like Terry White, Priceline and lots of independent stores have said they won't stock vapes. Are you still talking to chemists about this change?
BUTLER: Sure. And we're talking particularly to the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia, which isn't the business owners of pharmacy, it's the professional body that oversees training and professional guidelines for these highly qualified health professionals. And we're working with them. So it's got to be clear that pharmacies already provide vapes. Many, many pharmacies stock vapes, that are available on prescription, that are a useful product for particularly many hardened smokers.
So this is not new. They've been stocking these products for a considerable period of time. They've got very clear clinical guidelines developed by their professional body about how they have a conversation with the patient about different smoking cessation therapies. That might be, you know, more traditional nicotine replacement therapies, gum, patches, or it might be an e-cigarette or a vape. So this is not new, but ultimately it's a decision for individual businesses about whether or not they will stock this.
PARSONS: So can you just like let us in on where you're heading with this? In six months’ time, what is an ideal world? What is vaping going to look like in Australia?
BUTLER: as I said, this was presented as a therapeutic product. It was never sold to Australia or any of the other countries where health authorities are grappling with this epidemic of vaping - particularly among young people - it was never sold as a recreational product. And that is what it's become: something that so obviously has been designed by Big Tobacco to recruit a new generation to nicotine addiction. After 50 years of efforts by Australia and so many other countries to drive down the rates of nicotine addiction and smoking, because we know how dangerous it is, that is at risk of all being undone by this new strategy from Big Tobacco to hook young people to vapes, and through that, to give them an entry point into cigarette smoking. So I really want to see a big reduction in vaping. I don't pretend that there won't be some vapes that get into the country, in the same way I don't pretend that there isn't cocaine or heroin or other illicit drugs that get into the country, but I'm determined to stamp out this widespread, rampant recreational vaping, where nine out of ten vape stores have deliberately set up within walking distance of schools because they know that school students are their target market.
PARSONS: Okay, on the text line, someone says, “nah, I got mine easy. My tobacconist is good to me, with his stock under the counter.” Someone else in southeast Queensland says, “I'm having incredible difficulty getting vapes. So much so that I've started smoking cigarettes again.” Minister Mark Butler, thank you so much for coming on hack and sharing this info with us.
BUTLER: Thanks.
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