A week after the US Congress passed a bill to ban TikTok or force its sale, the federal government is using the social media platform for the first time in its $63.4 million "quit vaping" and anti-smoking campaign.
The "Give Up For Good' campaign will run across television, digital video and audio, social media, gaming, radio, cinema and out-of-home channels like billboards, shopping centres and bus shelters.
It includes four separate creative approaches to raise awareness of the health harms of smoking and vaping, and encourages Australians to take advantage of newly expanded quit support services.
No details have been provided on how much of the spend specifically is going to TikTok.
The US House of Representatives last week passed a bill which would force ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, to sell the popular social app or else face a nationwide ban.
The US vote in Congress, which passed in a rare bipartisan 352-65 display of unity, will now go to the Senate for signing which would effectively declare the app a national security threat.
The federal government last year banned the use of TikTok on government devices but has pushed back against pressure from the Coalition to follow the tough US stance against the platform, which is used by around 8.5 million Australian people and 350,000 businesses.
Pouring taxpayer funding into TikTok is clearly a calculated political risk, yet one which acknowledges the enormous reach of the platform with the key vaping audience, which is 14- to 24-year-olds.
The latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare survey data found that 7 per cent of people aged 14 years and over report currently using e-cigarettes, and 3.5 per cent using daily. The number of users doubled since the last survey in 2019.
Current usage rates for 18- to 24-year-olds was running at 21 per cent.
E-Cigarettes, with their high nicotine content, are illegal without a prescription but a lucrative black market trade has boomed and triggered a turf battle between rival organised crime groups resulting in more than 40 vaping and tobacco product stores across Victoria being firebombed since last December.
The same struggle for control of the black market has spread across all states and territories. Last month in Canberra, Border Force officers seized more than 285,000 cigarette sticks and close to 2000 disposable vapes worth more than $500,000.
The six-month scatter-gun federal ad campaign, which may yet flow into 2025, is aimed at boosting "young people's confidence in their ability to quit and empower them to take control of their physical and mental health".
It features messaging about how vaping can quickly progress from the early "casual" stage of using vapes, to becoming addictive and causing people to lose enjoyment from their social activities and connections.
It follows on from an earlier influencer-led and Spotify youth-targeted campaign which was viewed almost 7.7 million times.
Legislation to prevent the domestic manufacture, advertisement, supply and commercial possession of non-therapeutic vapes is currently before the Senate.
Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said that all senators "now have the once-in-a-generation opportunity and responsibility to act to safeguard the health of young Australians for generations to come".
"The best time to have done this would have been five years ago, but the second-best time is now," he said.
He said the government was now "closing every one of the loopholes left by the former government" on vaping.
The same campaign is also targeting smoking which, while current rates generally are declining, has higher usage rates among First Nations peoples, people in lower socioeconomic areas, people in rural and remote areas, those who identify as LGBTQIA+, and those in some multicultural communities.
