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Australia is clamping down on e-cigarettes, otherwise known as e-vaporisers or simply vapes.

Banning recreational vaping

Currently, vapes are mostly sold to teenagers and young people and have become a recreational product in Australia, according to Reuters.

"Vaping has become the number one behavioural issue in high schools. And it's becoming widespread in primary schools," Australia's Health Minister Mark Butler said on May 2, 2023 at the National Press Centre in Canberra.

To stamp out recreational vaping, especially among kids, and for vapes to only be sold to smokers to help them quit, the Australian government will be rolling out a slew of measures, such as controls on import and packaging.

More specifically, all disposable vapes and the import of non-prescription vapes will be banned, flavours and colours will be restricted, and allowed nicotine levels will be reduced.

Additionally, prescriptions will be necessary for the vaping products that remain legal and they will be required to have pharmaceutical-type packaging, according to BBC.

Banning recreational vaping

The country has one of the toughest anti-smoking laws in the world.

In 2012, Australia introduced plain packaging, which required producers to ditch all logos, brand imagery, symbols, other images, colours and promotional text from their tobacco products' packaging.

Instead, tobacco products were sold in a standardised nondescript olive green colour with a matt finish.

It was the first country in the world to roll out such measures.

Top image by Chiara Summer from Unsplash