Radio interview with Minister Butler and Peter Fegan, 4BC Brisbane Breakfast – 13 November 2024

PETER FEGAN, HOST: Vapes are a scourge on our society. They certainly are. And that reason is why the Albanese Government is cracking down and rolling out education programs in an effort to prevent young people from vaping. Now listen to this, this is my personal experience: the other day, I witnessed schoolkids, probably 13 or 14, vaping at a bus stop. I didn't know it actually happened. I didn't know it was that young. Vaping, it's everywhere. It's in Australian schools. It's become the number one behavioural issue for many students. Data shows that 1 in 6 high school students have vaped recently. It's scary. 1 in 6. And joining me in the studio is the federal Health Minister Mark Butler. Minister, it's great to have your time this morning.
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Great to be here.
 
FEGAN: 1 in 6. It's a scary statistic.
 
BUTLER: It's scary. And it just came out of nowhere. It exploded over the last 4 or 5 years. So the number of high school kids vaping increased fivefold over 4 years. So for every kid vaping in 2019, 5 of them were vaping 4 years later. For every thousand vaping, 5,000 were vaping 4 years later. And we really then started to understand what was behind these things. It was presented to us and to countries around the world as a device for hardened smokers, more my age, who'd been smoking for decades, could not kick the habit – just as another tool in the toolkit, you know, along with Nicorette and all the rest. But what became clear, pretty quickly, was it's actually a product being targeted at kids. You just had to look at them.
 
FEGAN: They’re attractive!
 
BUTLER: They’ve got unicorns on them, they're bubblegum flavoured. And then you had to look at where they were being sold: 9 out of 10 vape shops – that sprouted up over the course of COVID – 9 out of 10 were located within walking distance of schools, because that was their target market. So that's why we've taken such a hard line. We don't go into prohibition lightly, but we're doing it because we've got a window that is closing. This is a device to recruit a new generation to nicotine addiction: kids. Our kids. After decades of doing such hard work to get smoking rates down in this country, the only cohort where smoking is actually on the increase is young people.
 
FEGAN: It's scary!
 
BUTLER: A 12-year-old who vapes is 29 times more likely to take up ciggies. As a high school kid who vapes is 5 times more likely to take up
 
FEGAN: 12! Minister, we're talking about 12 year olds! I mean, it is scary to think that there are kids that young vaping.
 
BUTLER: We've been focused very much on high schools because that's really been the main venue of concern. You know, teachers are besides themselves. Parents are beside themselves. As you said, the number one behavioural issue in every high school. Now teachers are being rostered to spend their lunch hour – not just outside toilets – inside toilets, stopping them from vaping. Imagine having to stand inside a high –
 
FEGAN: Stopping them from vaping. You can’t smell it either. If you're a smoker, you're a dead giveaway because you can smell it. You can't conceal smoking. I mean, people try. You can smell it a mile away. These vapes, mate, it smells like they're chewing bubble gum.
 
BUTLER: So we're rolling out a program today, which we trialled over the last 12 months to targeted at year 7 and 8. That very impressionable age where they're just starting to sort of experiment with things. They're subject to a lot of peer group pressure. We rolled out this program through the University of Sydney, the Paul Ramsay Foundation – a terrific foundation – supporting it as well. It performed really well, with about 5,000 high school students, including here in Queensland. And because of those terrific results that teachers reported and young people reported themselves, we're now making that available in pretty much every high school in the country from next year.
 
FEGAN: So how is it going to work? How are you going to police this?
 
BUTLER: There's the policing, first of all. I mean, this is such a devilish hard task because a lot of it, frankly, we've discovered over the last couple of years, is now being driven by organised crime. They recognised this is a low-risk, high-reward market for them. They're using it to bankroll all of their other criminal activities like sex trafficking and drug trafficking. So this is not going to be easy. And I've never pretended to parents and to school leaders, we were going to be able to flick a switch on this. The first thing we had to do was stop them coming in. So I put an import control regulation that made it illegal to import disposable vapes from the 1st of January. And since then, we've seized well over 6 million vapes at the border. We've got intel – intelligence – from other countries, mainly China, frankly, where they mainly came from, that they see Australia now as not a good market, because so much of it gets seized. So we're starting to choke off supply. That's leading to it becoming harder to find. They're much more expensive. But we've got to police them. So we're working very hard with state authorities, who are doing a really good job getting out there – not so much the vape stores, because they are starting to shut – all of them in my electorate now are shut, for example. But the convenience stores, the tobacconists they're still selling vapes under the counter and we've got to shut that down. I passed laws in our parliament with really serious penalties: $2.2 million fine, up to 7 years jail for selling these vapes illegally, outside of a healthcare setting. And I'm deadly serious about enforcing that. In time, we will prosecute people.
 
FEGAN: Minister, can I ask you this: why are you telling me I can't vape, isn't it my choice? I'm an adult. Why are you telling me I can't smoke? It's my choice. Well, I mean, that's a fair question, isn't it?
 
BUTLER: And that is one I struggled with, I gotta say. You know, when I was talking to the health experts who said we have an exploding public health problem on our hands, and it's essentially one of young people. Not many older people vape. I mean, this is essentially a teenager, young adult problem. You know, I really grappled, because I'm not a prohibitionist by inclination, neither is the prime minister. We're generally more live and let live. I mean, obviously try and help people make smart decisions. But I just took the view that this was a mortal danger to our young people, a bit like social media. I mean, parents just were screaming out to us: ‘How did this happen? How did governments let my children get their hands on these products that not only they understand are a gateway to cigarettes, but in and of themselves are dangerous’. 200 chemicals in them.
 
FEGAN: But similar to social media, the government does have billion dollar tariffs on vapes. So if – let's present a hypothetical to you, Minister – if the government was gaining billions or millions of dollars in tax on vapes as they do on cigarettes, would we be having this conversation?
 
BUTLER: We've had that presented. I know the Opposition is working on a policy that would allow them to be sold in Australia and simply tax them like we tax cigarettes and booze. We've had a look at that. I mean, I took the view and other health ministers across the country also took the view that this was there was a closing window here. We should try and stamp it out. We should stamp out recreational vaping.
 
FEGAN: Because we stamped out cigarettes with kids, didn't we, really?
 
BUTLER: Yeah. 30 years ago, probably 6 in 10 high school students were having a ciggie and that came down to about 1 in 10. But it's starting to climb again – the only cohort. So we didn't take that decision lightly. But we've also looked at this regulate and tax model, the “Let it be sold, raise the white flag, this is now part of Australian society and we've just got to tax them.” New York tried to do that, for example. We've seen vaping rates continue to explode in New York. They raised next to nothing, because it's essentially an unregulated market. So we don't think that's the right way. I didn't do it lightly because I'm not naturally a prohibitionist. But this is about protecting our young people and not seeing 5 decades of hard work to drive down cigarette smoking rates all unwound with a new generation.
 
FEGAN: Before I do let you go, if I call you a “village idiot”, would you be offended? Would I be sacked if I worked for you and called you a “village idiot”?
 
BUTLER: I get called worse than that, I have to say, and that's just often by my staff and my family. But I think I know where you're going –
 
FEGAN: And do you believe Kevin Rudd should hold his position, yes or no?
 
BUTLER: I think he's the best man for the job.
 
FEGAN: Really?
 
BUTLER: Peter Dutton was asked about this on radio this morning. He agrees that Kevin is doing an amazing job here. I get that sometimes familiarity breeds contempt. But I know, on the world stage and in the US, how highly respected Kevin is. He is a go-to person, particularly about China and in particular about the Chinese President Xi. He is seen as a world expert on that. He is highly respected in the US –
 
FEGAN: Except by the leader of the free world.
 
BUTLER: Look, it's the nature of these things that people say. I remember when John Howard said, as President Obama was leading into his election, that “Al Qaeda would be praying for Obama's victory”.
 
FEGAN: Yeah, he did.
 
BUTLER: You know, and you've just got to move on from that stuff. These things get said in the heat of these intense political moments.
 
FEGAN: It makes it harder when he's a bit of a child, the person he's insulting.
 
BUTLER: At the end of the day, we choose who our ambassador is, you know, whether that's to the US or to any other country.
 
FEGAN: “We”, as in the people or Anthony Albanese?
 
BUTLER: The Australian Government –
 
FEGAN: – we didn't choose him. I mean, it was the captain's pick wasn’t it?
 
BUTLER: We, the Australian Government, chooses – whether that's a Liberal or a Labor government, and the US administration will choose who their ambassador is. And whoever that is we will work with. This is such an important relationship for us. We've fought alongside each other. We have promoted and defended the same values across the globe, decade after decade, no matter, frankly, who was in the White House in America, who was in the Lodge here in Canberra, and who the political party was in power at the time.
 
FEGAN: I'll let you go. I know that you're battling with the heat a little bit this morning. How was it?
 
BUTLER: Oh, geez. I see why people move up here so much.
 
FEGAN: Yeah, welcome to Brisbane.
 
BUTLER: Great time of the year to be in Brisbane.
 
FEGAN: Nice to have you in the studio, Minister. Always nice to chat.
 
BUTLER: Thanks mate.