Australia's health minister, Mark Butler, has been aware of the magnitude of the growing public health catastrophe of teenage vaping, just weeks into his tenure.

“We will address the legacy of nicotine vaping addiction, just as we have addressed cigarettes for decades,” he said.

It's a painful situation for a country that has pioneered plain packaging legislation and other restrictions on traditional tobacco products that have for years driven down smoking rates, increasingly driving them out of almost all public places.

Every time Butler meets state and territory health ministers, his counterparts sound the alarm about vaping-addicted children, the impact on their health and schooling, and the fight to stem the illegal import and sale of nicotine vaping products.

That prompted Butler to meet leading tobacco control experts in Adelaide in September. At the time, Quit Victoria director Sarah White said young children were calling the quitline not because they were smoking, but because they had become addicted to nicotine through vaping.

Butler said White told the shocking story of a 7th grader who called the quitline and said she didn't want to vape, but she didn't know how to resist because everyone in her class was doing it.

Simon Chapman, emeritus professor of public health at the University of Sydney and decades-old tobacco control advocate, was in attendance.

"The minister chaired the meeting and was with us for four and a half hours," Chapman said. "None of us can think of a health minister other than Nicola Roxon who has done that."

Roxon was health minister in Gillard's Labor government, who introduced plain packaging legislation in 2012 (when Butler was junior minister for health).

On Wednesday, on the 10th anniversary of the law's enactment, Butler announced that the Therapeutic Goods Administration will begin a public consultation on vaping reform.

He wants to stop illegal products entering Australia, create a regulated source of vaping products with known ingredients for those regulated vaping products for smoking cessation, and tackle the intensive marketing of these products to children through product design, flavoring and advertising.

E-cigarette use among Australian children doubled between 2016 and 2019, with NSW figures suggesting around 33 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds had used e-cigarettes in 2021.

Butler said educators and health practitioners have told him that e-cigarette use among teens has spiked further since the pandemic. He said significant funding was needed to develop health and educational resources to treat a generation of nicotine-addicted youth.

"I don't think anyone in the health sector is fully prepared for this ... It's been brewing for a few years, but it's really taken off in the last few years," Butler said. "Parents are deeply concerned about this, the school community is deeply concerned about it. It's been too long since action has been taken."

Butler said more than two million people in Australia vaped, and it was estimated that more people vaped than smoked cigarettes.

Thanks to Roxon's world-first tobacco plain packaging reform, fewer than 11 per cent of Australians smoke, down from 16 per cent a decade ago. In 2016, global tobacco company Imperial Brands reported to investors that Australia was the darkest tobacco market in the world because of the legislation. But now, thanks to the explosive growth of vaping, Imperial Brands is hiring a sales manager in Australia.

A job ad says the company is increasingly focused on developing a leading next-generation product portfolio — namely, e-cigarettes. Likewise, Philip Morris International has been touting exciting roles in the Northern Territory, New South Wales and Queensland for innovators looking to partner with retailers to help the brand move towards a smoke-free future focused on electronics.

Butler is particularly puzzled by the ease with which kids buy e-cigarettes from convenience stores and other retailers. Many of these are not produced by tobacco companies, but are cheap imports from China. In Australia, it is illegal to sell vaping products to children, whether or not they contain nicotine. Nicotine vaping products are only legal for adults when prescribed by a doctor to help quit smoking.

"I think it's disgusting," Butler said. "We're talking about very, very young kids. Not someone who looks like an adult. These products are being sold to young kids, marketed to them on purpose."

"They're also getting goods through these very hard-to-control channels, they're ordering things on social media. They're coming from overseas and they're being sold on campus. So I don't think this reform is going to be easy ... the market for these products is really It's confusing."

Chapman said that in his 45 years of tobacco control work, he has never seen such blatant, blatant flouting of the law as stores selling e-cigarettes to children and teens.

“Imagine what would happen if thousands of rogue pharmacists decided to give the middle finger to the need to get prescriptions for antibiotics or codeine, and hand them over to anyone who needed them,” he said.

“That’s what those selling nicotine vapes are doing, fringe vaping advocacy groups with helpful idiots fueling demand.”

Roxon will not be held responsible for the growth of nicotine addiction among young people by the previous government, following hard-won gains against traditional tobacco products.

"After the recent lost years, it's great to see the Commonwealth stepping up strongly to address the significant harm done to Australians," she said.

"The vast majority of Australians who use e-cigarettes have never smoked - and now face serious health risks from heating and inhaling tobacco and many chemicals, often unidentified and untested."

"It's time to stop comparing vaping to smoking - vaping is dangerous in its own right. To properly protect children and young people from the surge in vaping use, we need a commensurate effort, with urgent state and federal action. action."

The TGA's public consultation process is open until January 16. Asked why the government needed a consultation when public health experts have long called for changes, such as a blanket ban on the import of over-the-counter vaping products, Butler said: "It's a relatively short consultation period, so we haven't lost too much." Much time here, it's good governance, good practice, to be consulted.

But lobby groups for e-cigarettes and big tobacco will also be able to make submissions.

“I am very confident that the people who are in charge of the consultation, especially the head of the TGA, Professor John Skerritt, are very aware of the points that the industry will make on this,” Butler said.

"But we need to have a consultation because there is no easy response to this. We have to deal with this on a range of fronts, not only through the health mix, but we're also going into policing and border control."

"I am determined to see Australia reclaim its position as the world leader in tobacco control because, frankly, lives are at stake."

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