The number of vapes seized in New South Wales has increased by 500% over the past three years as the state government attempts to clamp down on a scourge the health minister says needs to be dealt with before it is too late.
Figures obtained by Guardian Australia show last year more than 182,000 vapes were seized by NSW Health across the state, up from 30,000 in 2020 and 76,000 in 2021.
Over the same period, the number of inspections more than doubled, from 1,343 in 2020 to 3,379 last year.
The health minister, Ryan Park, described the surge as an “alarming trend” that needed to be addressed.
“We’re seeing more and more of these things around us,” he said. “We now know there are significant acute health harms, and we fear what the long-term impacts will be. We have a real opportunity to stem the tide, but that window is rapidly closing.”
He said the government understood the community expected action to be taken and the department was working to combat the “pervasiveness of these products”.
Further measures are expected to be announced next week when the Minns government hands down its first budget since Labor’s return to power after more than a decade.
As it stands, NSW Health has a team of inspectors that it uses for tobacco and e-cigarette compliance and enforcement. They work alongside NSW police to search retail stores, seize illegal products and prosecute sellers.
It is illegal to sell, supply or possess an e-cigarette or any liquid that contains nicotine in Australia without a doctor’s prescription, but the supply and sale of vapes is rampant across the country.
Legislative changes being introduced by the federal health minister, Mark Butler, will aim to block vapes from entering Australia in the first place, but he said states and territories were “committed to doing their bit on-the-ground” by monitoring stores and other vendors for illegal products.
Butler this week also announced a suite of new measures to tackle tobacco and vape advertising and packaging laws, insisting he was confident Australia could again fight the tobacco industry and win.
“We can’t forget the fight against traditional cigarettes or what young people call analogs now, but the so-called digital durries – the vapes – are the new frontier to stop a new generation of nicotine addicts being recruited by this industry,” he said on Tuesday.
Butler was especially concerned about vapes that had slipped through the nation’s regulatory frameworks.
“We need to catch up, we need to reflect what is international best practice here to stamp out these new marketing tactics,” he said.
“There are strong bans on advertising cigarettes. They’ve been in place for a long time, but there is a loophole for e-cigarettes we want to close.”
