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Speaker 1: Earlier this month, the federal government announced sweeping changes to vaping,

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Speaker 1: particularly targeting young people, with strong regulation and enforcement of

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Speaker 1: e cigarettes, including new controls on their importation, their contents,

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Speaker 1: as well as their packaging. It's understood the government's going

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Speaker 1: to be working with states and territories to really put

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Speaker 1: a stop to black market sales, including the importation of

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Speaker 1: nicotine vapes, banning disposable devices, and restricting those flavors. Now

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Speaker 1: joining me on the line to shed some further light

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Speaker 1: on this situation is the federal Health Minister Mark Butler.

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Speaker 2: Good morning to your minister.

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Speaker 3: Good morning, Cadie. I can tell you it's a lot

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Speaker 3: colder down here in Camber than enough.

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Speaker 1: I did wonder that as I was reading out those

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Speaker 1: temperatures in the weather and knew that you were listening

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Speaker 1: from Camber, and thought.

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Speaker 2: Oh, I know where I'd rather be, Minister.

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Speaker 1: He obviously quite a raft of changes when it comes

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Speaker 1: to vaping. Can you talk us through these changes that

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Speaker 1: have been announced?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, just stepping back one second. This is a

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Speaker 3: relatively new product and it was sold to governments around

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Speaker 3: the world and to communities for that matter, as a

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Speaker 3: therapeutic product that was supposed to help long term smokers

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Speaker 3: kick the habit, so it was supposed to be something

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Speaker 3: like nigoretes and things like that, but it's become a

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Speaker 3: recreational product, and particularly for young people. So one in

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Speaker 3: four young people have vaped. Only one in seventy people

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Speaker 3: my age I'm in my fifty is only one in

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Speaker 3: seventy people have vaped. So it's very much a product

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Speaker 3: that the industry is targeting at young people, and it's

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Speaker 3: rife in our schools. As your listeners today, when we

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Speaker 3: did a consultation over the summer, school communities, teachers, school

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Speaker 3: principles and parents groups tell us time and time again

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Speaker 3: this is now the number one behavioral issue schools are facing,

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Speaker 3: and not just high schools, but primary schools are facing.

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Speaker 3: And what we're determined as a group of health ministers,

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Speaker 3: this wasn't just me as the federal health minister, but

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Speaker 3: all of the health ministers, including Natasha Files, your Health

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Speaker 3: Minister and chief Minister in the territory, are determined to

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Speaker 3: take action to stop the tobacco industry creating a new

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Speaker 3: generation in nicoteen addicts. Because that's what this is doing.

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Speaker 1: I think that's the concern that a lot of parents

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Speaker 1: have got you know, I've got school aged.

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Speaker 2: Children, and you're spot on. It's a real issue.

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Speaker 1: Whether your kids are sort of at middle school, high school,

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Speaker 1: or primary school.

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Speaker 2: It's something that they're all grappling with.

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Speaker 1: Are we going to see vapings soon become like cigarettes

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Speaker 1: with plane packaging and those health warnings.

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Speaker 3: We are I mean at the moment, you know, these

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Speaker 3: things are being sold deliberately targeted to not just teenagers,

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Speaker 3: but to young children. So you see them with pink

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Speaker 3: unicorns on them, they're cherry flavored, their bubblegum flavored. I mean,

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Speaker 3: this is not a product being sold to adults. This

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Speaker 3: is deliberately being marketed to children. The shops are being

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Speaker 3: deliberately set up down the road from schools because they

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Speaker 3: know that is their that is their target market, and

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Speaker 3: we're determined to stamp this out. Not only is it

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Speaker 3: a pathway into smoking, even though we were sold this

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Speaker 3: product as a pathway out of smoking, it is a

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Speaker 3: pathway into smoking vapors. Young vapors are three times as

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Speaker 3: likely to take up cigarettes as non vapors. And we

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Speaker 3: know that the only group in the community now where

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Speaker 3: smoking rates are increasing are young Australians and that in

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Speaker 3: my view, is deliberately connected to vapes.

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Speaker 1: So when are these new regulations specifically that ban on

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Speaker 1: juices and disposable vapes.

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Speaker 2: When are they going to take effect?

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Speaker 3: So we now need to sit down with states and

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Speaker 3: territory governments and set up a comprehensive enforcement framework. We

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Speaker 3: have said we will do everything we can to stop

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Speaker 3: these things at the border, and the problem is we've

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Speaker 3: had open borders for vapes and the former government wasn't

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Speaker 3: able to put in border controls. Greek Hunt, the former

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Speaker 3: Minister for Health, to his credit, wanted to do that,

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Speaker 3: but he got rolled in his party rams. So some

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Speaker 3: years now we've effectively had open borders. These things have

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Speaker 3: been flooding in from overseas. As the Commonwealth with control

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Speaker 3: of our borders. We've got to stop that as much

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Speaker 3: as we possibly can, but state and territory governments then

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Speaker 3: need to put some resources in to policing the sale

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Speaker 3: of these things. Four out of five young people have

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Speaker 3: told us in research or told independent researchers that votes

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Speaker 3: are easy to get. They can get at the convenience stores,

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Speaker 3: at service stations, and a whole bunch of other places. Besides,

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Speaker 3: and we've got to shut that down. These are too

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Speaker 3: easy to get and they're causing very very serious health

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Speaker 3: problems for our youngest people.

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Speaker 2: Minister.

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Speaker 1: Look, I, like I said before, I'm a parent of

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Speaker 1: two young people, so I see these changes as being

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Speaker 1: a positive thing. But I also I actually know quite

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Speaker 1: a few young adults who do vape.

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Speaker 2: And they're not doing anything illegal.

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Speaker 1: So you know, how do you sort of how do

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Speaker 1: you juggle this in the sense that you've got people

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Speaker 1: that are vaping that don't really want to smoke cigarettes

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Speaker 1: and they're not doing anything illegal, they're not doing the

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Speaker 1: wrong thing.

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Speaker 3: Well, that's right, We're not targeting the users, we're targeting

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Speaker 3: the vendors. I go back to my original point. We

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Speaker 3: were sold this product as a pathway out of smoking,

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Speaker 3: and instead it's now being sold by the industry as

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Speaker 3: a recreational product. It is doing very serious damage to people.

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Speaker 3: We respiratory physicians, the people who know the most about lungs,

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Speaker 3: tell us there is no safe amount of chemical to

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Speaker 3: ingest in your lungs. But these things have two hundred

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Speaker 3: chemicals in them, including the same chemicals that go to

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Speaker 3: make weed killer, nail polish remover. And things like that.

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Speaker 3: So this is being sold as something like a safe product,

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Speaker 3: it simply isn't. Not only is it a pathway into smoking,

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Speaker 3: but in and of itself, ingesting all of those chemicals

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Speaker 3: into your lungs is just a bad thing. We know

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Speaker 3: that through bitter, bitter experience, through smoking for asbestos, through

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Speaker 3: silica products that are calling causing silicosis across the country,

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Speaker 3: and things like that. O Katie, We've got a division

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Speaker 3: on in the Parliament which I'm going to have to

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Speaker 3: go into. I really so that. It's been terrific to

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Speaker 3: talk to you, Okay.

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Speaker 2: No worries at all.

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Speaker 1: Hopefully we'll be able to catch up with you again

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Speaker 1: soon to try and get some further info on this

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Speaker 1: vaping situation. Minister, thanks for your time.

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Speaker 3: Would love to do enjoy the hot weather up there.

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Speaker 3: I'm very jealous.

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Speaker 2: Thank you.