SYDNEY: Australia on Tuesday (May 2) proposed to tighten e-cigarette laws, including introducing new controls on import and packaging to stamp out vaping especially among kids, in the biggest crackdown on the tobacco industry in more than a decade.
The federal government will take steps to ban all disposable vapes and the import of non-prescription vapes, restrict flavours and colours, and reduce allowed nicotine levels, aiming for vapes only to be sold as products to help smokers quit.
“Just like they did with smoking, Big Tobacco has taken another addictive product, wrapped it in shiny packaging and added flavours to create a new generation of nicotine addicts,” Health Minister Mark Butler will say in a speech at the National Press Club, excerpts of which was seen by Reuters.
Under the new rules, vapes will be required to have pharmaceutical-type packaging.
Vaping, widely seen as a safer alternative to smoking cigarettes and a product to help smokers quit, involves heating a liquid that contains nicotine in what is called an e-cigarette and turning it into a vapour that users inhale.
Source: CNA
