MICHAEL USHER: Why the Government’s toothless e-cigarette ban is failing

The Government’s strong crackdown on vaping faces a major challenge in the next 10 days. And it could send the whole plan up in a puff of smoke.

Crucial to the strategy of removing these insidious, chemical-filled plastic devices from the hands of pretty much everyone — but especially teenage users — is selling a small number of approved flavours and brands over the counter at your local chemist, as long as you have a chat with the pharmacist first. And only to those over 18.

It’s a heavily regulated approach that has been a passion project of the Federal Health Minister Mark Butler. He has driven the vape ban and unlike a lot of Government policy, this one had a purpose and was quickly endorsed. But — and there’s a big but — chemists across the country don’t like it at all.

So on October 1, when this key final stage of the Government’s plan kicks in, chemists are highly unlikely to be on board.

To this point vapes have been banned in a couple of stages over the past year, initially cracking down on all sales and mostly shutting down those sketchy-looking tobacco shops that seemed to have popped everywhere. You’ll have seen them. The cheap signage, a couple of bare shelves looking like a convenience store, then a bloke peering through a small window at the rear of the store. Ask him the right question — and it’s not exactly spy-level passwords or catchphrases — and the tobacconist will produce your vape of choice from under the counter.

We just went through this exercise with the Spotlight program. Despite vapes being banned from sale since July 1, with heavy penalties for anyone trying to sell them, we found five different stores with supplies of imported vapes, all willing to sell them in various flavours and quantities, without question.

Online, it was surprisingly just as easy. In fact, the websites we found were proud to be still selling the banned vapes and almost boasted that they’ll continue to fight the bans and stay loyal to their customers. Good old-fashioned supply and demand. It appears the supply is coming from China still, but with some reselling via New Zealand, where laws are less strict. Delivery of these online orders was swift. Plain packages that arrived in a few days via Australia Post.

Now it could be argued it’s early days, and these suppliers and vape resellers have vast existing stocks from before the July 1 ban.

The Health Minister Mark Butler told me he suspects that may be the case, and points to mass seizures of vapes at our borders. There have been some incredible intercepts of thousands of illegal vapes trying to get through our ports. But where Mr Butler seems less confident, for now at least, is the crackdown on the local suppliers and shops selling them without question. That is being left to local health authorities or police. And from what we could find, that’s not really happening. It’s a weak link in the national fight against vaping. The strategy seems to be to stop the vape shipments at our ports, but there’s no busting down of doors or shutting up shops to send a message to the vape sellers that what they’re doing is now illegal trade.

But the main weak leak is the pharmacists who aren’t playing along with the Federal Government. The Pharmacy Guild of Australia is a powerful group and not shy of getting in the political weeds to fight for their 33,000 members nationwide, but on this issue, they have some clear points.

Simply, they don’t want pharmacists to become tobacconists. But legally they’re terrified of selling a product and giving advice on it, that hasn’t been examined thoroughly by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. And they seem to have a point here. Mr Butler is calling the three vapes approved for sale in your local chemist as a therapeutic good. But as of now, it hasn’t passed the criteria of being an official therapeutic good. The TGA doesn’t move as fast as the policy implemented by Mr Butler.

Now that may happen. But for now, there’s not much chance of you walking into the chemist and getting a vape after a consultation. The pharmacists not only don’t want to sell non-TGA-approved products, but they’re also not being educated in time to offer advice about what chemicals or nicotine or other ingredients it may or may not contain, and there’s another big concern.

Vapes are hot property in criminal circles. There’s reasonable evidence especially in Melbourne, that an element of the violent tobacco wars is based on seizing control of illegal vape sales.

A criminologist we interviewed for Spotlight this Sunday night argues that banning vapes is just feeding underground criminal networks. He’s given evidence to both the Victorian and Federal parliaments saying as such.

The bottom line is this. Vapes are bad. They’re filled with chemicals that kill your health. They’re loved by kids way too much. And they were way too easy to buy so the Government banned them. A good move, but perhaps a policy that just hasn’t been thought through or delivered properly down the line.

Busting the local shops and online sites selling their dodgy stock would be a good start. Then getting the pharmacists on board instead of opposed to the plan.

God forbid the strange opposite occurs here, for which there’s anecdotal evidence, that the whole fuss over vaping is driving some smokers back to cigarettes. Now that really would send this bold vaping ban up in smoke.