CRAIG ZONCA, HOST: More Queensland kids than ever before are taking up vaping. The situation is so serious it's now reached endemic levels in Australian schools. Now the federal government is taking a stand, they say, introducing a nationwide intervention program to protect pre-teens from what can be a very harmful addiction. Federal Health Minister Mark Butler is in Brisbane this morning to announce the initiative. Minister, good morning to you.
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Good morning.
ZONCA: What is the program and, how will it work?
BUTLER: This is a program targeted at year 7 and 8 students, a really formative age as you're starting to be exposed to some of these risky behaviours, but also take decisions about whether you go into them or whether you say no. It's a program that we've trialled over the course of the last year. It's a partnership between the University of Sydney that's been doing this work with kids these ages for many years, in areas like alcohol use and the use of illicit drugs. They've reshaped their program really around what is such a significant threat today, and that is vaping. The trial over the course of about 5,000 high school students, including students here in Queensland, has been extraordinarily positive, very high ratings from students. But also, importantly, teachers who've been crying out for some supports, given that they were saying right across the country vaping is now the number one behavioural issue in schools, not just high schools, too in primary schools as well, increasingly, which is just terrifying. We're rolling out the programme now to all high schools in 2025. When the new academic year begins, all high schools will be able to do that. And I know they're really keen to do that because when we opened up the trial, we were just overwhelmed with high schools reaching out to these providers and saying, we want something, we want to be a part of the trial.
LORETTA RYAN, HOST: And the reaction from the kids themselves, what did they say about vaping and why they did it?
BUTLER: I know one of the things that we've been battling, we know from our research is that teenagers think vaping is harmless. They think smoking's bad, and they think vaping is a relatively harmless product. Just teaching these pretty young teenagers, year 7s and 8s and tweens, the real facts about vaping – 200 very harmful chemicals in them. But also it's a pathway to smoking is useful in and of itself. That's important. They say they didn't know the real facts about vaping. But then the program goes on to teach them how to say no effectively, how to recognise addiction in friends who might be addicted to vapes and to talk to them about it. It really is an important sort of socialisation about not just how to recognise risky behaviour or risky products like vapes or alcohol or drugs for that matter, but also how to go through the process of resisting peer pressure, resisting temptation, and taking the healthy choice.
RYAN: And it's also those other messages they're getting from people who are saying, “Oh, it's healthier now”. I know I saw a young girl vaping the other day and I said, “Well, what are you doing that for? You know, it's bad.” Like, I knew this girl. And she said, “Oh, it's better for me than smoking.” But to get it through their head that it's actually not. How do you do that?
BUTLER: Through programs like this. The campaigns that we've been using are not a 54-year-old Health Minister like me wagging their finger at them. But we're using influencers, people they listen to on social media, we've been advertising on TikTok. These are all pretty innovative things for the Commonwealth Government to do. And that's not things that we've traditionally done, but we're also trying to sort of break that myth that it's either vaping or smoking. We've known for some time now that this has all been a device by Big Tobacco to lure a new generation into cigarettes, a new generation into nicotine addiction. And some of the research I've seen recently that was published is just terrifying. A 12-year-old who vapes is 29 times more likely to take up cigarettes. It's just terrifying. And we know now that was always the objective of Big Tobacco and presenting these products to the community. But tragically, we also know it's working. Vaping rates exploded over the last 4 years. The high school smoking rate has plummeted over the last 30 years since I was in high school absolutely plummeted. But it's now starting to tick back up again because vaping is the gateway back to cigarettes. And we know over decades and decades of tragic experience just how dangerous smoking cigarettes is.
ZONCA: The Federal Health Minister Mark Butler, with you on 612 ABC Brisbane. How are they getting access to vapes in the first place, Minister?
BUTLER: The truth is that this got under everyone's radar and they're just they've been everywhere. Vape stores popped up over the last 5 years, which is really the period that vaping skyrocketed. Vaping rates among teenagers increased five-fold in the past 4 years, particularly over the course of COVID. And 9 out of 10 of those vape stores opened up within walking distance of schools, not by accident, but because they know that schools were their target market. We've put in place laws that have now made the sale of vapes outside a health care setting, which is a pharmacy, made that sale illegal. And I know that the vape stores are shutting down now because they've got no legal business model. In my electorate, for example, every single vape store that was open before the 1st of July is now shut. But we are still having real trouble with convenience stores, and tobacconists still selling vapes illegally. There have been hundreds of operations with state health authorities, including here in Queensland, to get out and make very clear that this is illegal. The fines are very significant under the laws that we passed in the parliament, fines of up to $2.2 million, jail time of up to 7 years for selling these vapes illegally. But it doesn't please me to say that this is still happening, and it is going to take some time to stamp out because there are some very bad people involved in this market. Now, organised crime is making a lot of money out of this very for them, very lucrative trade.
RYAN: Federal Health Minister Mark Butler with us. You said vaping is the gateway back to cigarettes a. And today we're seeing on other news news, a push to have warnings imprinted on cigarette butts. So we see them on the packets. But now there's a push to have them on the butts. Are you in favour of that?
BUTLER: I decided it. When we came to government, it was clear to us that the world-leading laws that we put in place when we were last in government under Nicola Roxon, plain packaging laws that Big Tobacco fought through the global courts for years, they were very successful. They were very, very successful and have been since copied by dozens of countries, particularly successful at putting off young people who are thinking about taking up smoking in the first place. But over a decade, Big Tobacco companies had started to find ways around those laws. They were presenting the individual cigarette sticks in attractive ways, so-called Vogues that were apparently very attractive for your Instagram posts. They were flavouring the cigarettes, you'd have a menthol bomb that would explode into your mouth three quarters of the way through the cigarette. We had to update our laws, and we engaged, and I personally engaged with a whole lot of the tobacco control experts that we have in this country, some of whom have been leading the global fight against tobacco for many years. We looked around the world at what other countries had been doing. The UK, Canada and many others had really sort of leaped ahead of us. We had been the world leader. They had leaped ahead of us in the area of tobacco control regulation. And we put this package through the parliament some time ago. I announced them in 2022. They went through the parliament early last year, I think from memory and these new regulations start to take effect next year.
ZONCA: Health Minister Mark Butler, appreciate your time this morning. Thanks so much.
BUTLER: Thanks very much.
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