Radio interview with Minister Butler and Craig Reucassel, ABC Radio Sydney - 12 June 2024

CRAIG REUCASSEL, HOST: Mark Butler, the Federal Health Minister, joins us now and is behind these new ads. Thanks for joining us, Minister.
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Good morning, Craig.
 
REUCASSEL: So these ads are kind of aimed at - that one particularly is aimed at the teen market - where are you going to be putting it to try and get to these teenagers?
 
BUTLER: We're going to put it across a whole range of places, but most obviously social media, which is where young people get pretty much all of their information. They're not listening to much mainstream radio or watching much mainstream TV, they're certainly not really reading newspapers. So we're going on to social media and really notably, we're going on to TikTok. For the first time directly the Commonwealth is going to be advertising on TikTok, where we know that young people get so much of their information. A few months ago, I announced that we were using social media influencers to get anti-vaping messages up on TikTok as well, and that's been very successful. But I think it will be interesting for your listeners to know that, for the first time, the Government is advertising on TikTok. We didn't do that lightly, but we took the view that we couldn't vacate the field. At the last count, there were some 8 billion pro-vaping posts on TikTok. I mean, young people are just inundated with these things. We simply couldn't vacate the field.
 
REUCASSEL: No, obviously, and you need to compete where people are actually watching. In terms of that, you said that the influencers that you've already sponsored have been successful. Do you have any evidence of that?
 
BUTLER: Just in terms of eyeballs - we'll evaluate the campaign more formally over time - but we only announced this right at the end of February. I'm told that already those influencer posts have been viewed almost 8 million times. There have had more than 600,000 likes, they appear to me to be hitting the mark. They are sort of a range of influencers across different tastes, if you like. There are some influencers who will tend to be viewed by young people who like gaming there'll be influencers who have a more of a sporting profile or more of a comedy profile as well. So we've tried to spread the market a little bit, but they seem to be getting a lot of eyeballs. But it is early days, we will be evaluating this pretty carefully because it, again, is a relatively new style of campaign for the Government to engage in.
 
REUCASSEL: Yeah, it's interesting, as you say, it's a new style. It's not just aimed at young people, there’s the ‘Why Are We Still Doing This?’ ad, which is aimed at young people. There's also the ‘Vaping. Are You Really Choosing Anymore?’, which is focused on adults, as well. It's not kind of showing as much as the old cigarette ads, the kind of negative health consequences, it's more focusing on this idea that you become addicted by surprise, in a sense. Have you done studies to show that's the kind of thing that most, you know, where you need to target these ads, if you're going to get people off vapes, or at least stopping them taking up vapes?
 
BUTLER: Totally. I mean, we researched these very, very carefully. There are also some more traditional anti-smoking ads that are going out during this campaign with adults -  
 
REUCASSEL: Yeah, with the surprising, slogan 'Choose Your Hard’, which I don't think really converts, but anyway, the ad works, but the slogan is a bit weird.
 
BUTLER: Have a look at the ad, it's a more a traditional health harms message that “you're going to get very, very sick, you're at risk of dying and it's going to impact your loving relationships”. But you're right, the vaping messages are more focused on addiction, and that was what we found through the research really resonated, particularly with young people. Although there are adult vaping ads, the segment of the population that's really taken up vaping in big numbers are young Australians. We see that right across the world, as I talk to my colleagues internationally. I mean, it's teenagers and very, very young adults that are vaping at alarming rates. Not that adults aren’t doing it, but not at anything near the rates we're seeing high school students and very young adults doing it.
 
REUCASSEL: Yeah.
 
BUTLER: You're right, the addiction message was the one that really, resonated with them.
 
BREUCASSEL: It's interesting. We're talking to the Health Minister Mark Butler. It's interesting, because the question in the young people's ad is, ‘Why Are We Still Doing This?’ And of course, we know the answer. The reason they're still doing it is they become addicted to nicotine. So it's really in the end, the ad is not going to get you likely off an addiction to nicotine, it's going to be more about stopping the ability to get these vapes. How are we going on this front? I mean, I still see vapes for sale openly in shops - or maybe less openly than it was, you know, six months ago – but it’s pretty obvious there. Where are we, how are we going in actually stopping the supply of these vapes?
 
BUTLER: The first phase of our campaign was to try to stop them at the border. So I made a regulation that took effect on the 1st of January to ban the import of disposable vapes, which are particularly the vapes that appeal to younger people, you know, including primary school age kids are buying these things. You know that they are targeted at kids: they're brightly coloured, they have cartoon characters on them, they're bubble gum flavoured. I mean, this is not a therapeutic device aimed at middle aged people. We’ve seized almost 2 million of those vapes at the border that's been very successful. We gave quite substantial additional resources to Border Force and to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, so that's had an impact starting to choke off the supply of these things coming from overseas. Anecdotally, I'm hearing that stores are having difficulty getting their hands on vapes, the prices are going up.
 
The next important phase, though, is legislation that's before the Federal Parliament right now, which is to actually ban the sale and supply of these things - other than as a therapeutic good, through a pharmacy - to ban the sale and supply. We haven't got that legislation through yet, we've got it through the House of Representatives, and it's due to be debated in the Senate when we go back to Canberra the week after next.
 
REUCASSEL: You're confident of getting that through? I mean this is what people are asking about. Susan on the text line; “When are the vape shops going to be closed? There are 17 in Potts Point”. You know, this is the real problem, isn't it?
 
BUTLER: Absolutely the problem. School communities are beside themselves about it because we know that 9 out of 10 vape stores have opened up within walking distance of schools, and that's not a coincidence, it's because they see that as their target market. So to your question about whether I'm going to get this through: we know the National Party has opted out of this, they said they'd oppose the legislation before I'd even released it. I'm not quite clear yet what the Liberal Party will do, but we're having very constructive discussions with crossbench parties. I'm hopeful that Peter Dutton sees the sense of this, and hears the complaints from parents and school communities about the degree to which this market has just exploded -
 
REUCASSEL: Can I just ask you, Minister, if this gets through - because obviously, the big concern that I have and I know a lot of other parents have about this is that, yes, you're doing the right thing to try and get rid of the vaping, but for a large group of teenagers who are right now addicted to nicotine, if you're successful in getting rid of the vapes, they're going to probably take up cigarettes - the next available thing for them is cigarettes, which are there, and then they can get the nicotine from that. What are you doing to make sure that the people, once you stop the supply of vapes, that there's something to actually get kids off the nicotine addiction rather than just onto cigarettes, which makes it look like a brilliant long-term play by the cigarette manufacturers?
 
BUTLER: Obviously we've had that front of mind as we've been working through this, Craig. You're right, the last thing we want to see is to shut down one insidious device, being vapes that are targeted at kids and simply move them onto cigarettes. I mean, that's why we passed legislation before Christmas to update our tobacco controls. So, to look at some of the ways in which, since we introduced plain packaging a decade ago, the cigarette companies have tried to get around those reforms and make their traditional cigarettes look more attractive, particularly to young people. So you’re having cigarettes marketed as things like ‘vogues’ and trying to make them look attractive for Instagram posts and things like that. We've cracked down on that, there are new regulations that are coming into effect to make cigarettes much more unattractive. We've increased the excise on that.
 
But importantly to your question about what's going to happen to kids who are addicted to nicotine: as part of the launch of the advertising campaigns over the weekend, we also launched $30 million of additional resources to help people quit. I mean, I'm determined to drive the vaping industry out of the country, but I'm just as determined to help Australians quit vaping, but also to quit cigarettes. I mean, we've done very well on cigarettes, but we want to drive that smoking rate down even further.
 
REUCASSEL: Yeah.
 
BUTLER: And a lot of those resources will be targeted at supporting parents and carers and school communities who are already grappling with kids who are nicotine addicted. I mean, I heard stories, late last year of kids doing their year 11 and 12 exams, having to have nicotine patches on them -
 
REUCASSEL: Yeah, it's extraordinary –
 
BUTLER: That’s the level of addiction.
 
REUCASSEL: And I'm glad there is some kind of attempt to try and get them off the addiction as well, because that's really the answer to that question involved in the ads ‘Why are we still doing this?’ Thanks for talking to us, Minister Butler, and we'll talk to you again when this is passing through the Senate. I'm fascinated to see if it has a clean and easy path through the Senate.
 
BUTLER: Thanks so much, Craig.
 
REUCASSEL: Good on you, Mark Butler, the Federal Health Minister there.