Are Australian vaping laws effective or falling short?

Australia has made headlines around the world for implementing some of the strictest vaping laws, in a bid to curb nicotine addiction and protect public health. But the Federal Government is facing increasing scrutiny as questions arise about the actual impact of these laws.
 
Despite rigorous regulations banning the sale of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes without a prescription or outside of a pharmacy setting, vaping remains widespread, and concerns are mounting that the laws may be inadvertently pushing vapers towards unregulated black markets.
 
New data has revealed that, up to 30 May 2025, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has received just 40,000 Special Access Scheme (SAS) notifications for vaping products sold without a prescription from 2000 pharmacists.
 
This equates to less than 170 non-prescription vaping products sold nationally, each day.
 
In comparison, millions of illegal vapes are being seized by Border Force, with more than 7 million products seized in 2024 alone.
 
It was the worrying uptake among young people that led to legislation being introduced from 1 July 2024 so that all vaping goods, including those that do not contain nicotine, can only legally be sold at participating pharmacies.
 
To help expand access beyond prescription-only, from 1 October 2024, pharmacists were given permissions under the SAS C notification pathway to supply vapes with a nicotine concentration of 20 mg/mL or less to people 18 years or over without a prescription, subject to certain conditions and state and territory law.
 
A spokesperson from the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (DoHDA) did note that the SAS-C notification data ‘is only an indication of supply of therapeutic vapes through pharmacies in Australia’, suggesting the numbers could be higher.
 
‘This is because it only reflects notifications to the TGA where the pharmacist was directly responsible for the supply; it doesn’t include notifications where therapeutic vape is prescribed by a health practitioner; [and] notification of supply of a vaping product does not necessarily correlate to sales volume and up to one month’s supply can be dispensed as part of a single notification,’ they said.
 
But Professor Nick Zwar, Chair of the RACGP Smoking Cessation Expert Advisory Group, says while he has seen an increase in the number of people seeking out a prescription for vaping products, it is not easy for patients to locate a prescriber nor a pharmacy that dispenses.
 
‘So, both of those make it harder for people to go down the legal pathway,’ he told newsGP.
 
Of the more than 39,000 GPs in Australia, approximately 3000 are approved as Authorised Prescribers (APs) of vaping products. While just 2000 of the country’s 38,000 pharmacists have logged an SAS notification to sell vaping products without a prescription.
 
The DoHDA spokesperson told newsGP the Federal Government’s vaping reforms ‘aim to strike the appropriate balance’.
 
‘Protecting young Australians and the broader community from the health risks of vaping, while ensuring patients who legitimately need vapes can still access them to help them quit smoking or manage nicotine dependence,’ they said.  
 
While Federal Minister for Health and Ageing Mark Butler acknowledged action is needed to shut down the illegal sale of vaping products, he continues to defend the current laws, saying they are working towards ‘taking the vapes out of the hands of our kids’.
 
‘The first thing I did was put in place an import restriction to stop these things coming into the country in the first place,’ Minister Butler said.
 
‘They were flooding into the country under the old regime.’
 
The positive impact on youth uptake has been backed by the latest national data from the Cancer Council’s Generation Vape study, which found 18% of people aged 18–24 regularly vaped during October to December 2024, similar to the number of young adults who smoked.
 
The Council’s modelling also predicts that without the current legislation, an additional 1185 young people aged 12–19 would take up vaping each week.
 
Professor Zwar said that while it is still early days, the data is promising.
 
He says the legislation has led to the price of illegal vapes skyrocketing, which could be a key factor in decreased use among young people.
 
‘Young people just don’t have the money to pay for them,’ Professor Zwar said.
 
‘That’s always been the case and shown over many years that use of nicotine products – most research has been about smoking – in young people is more price sensitive than in adults.’
 
However, the Queensland-based GP says despite the legislation, there is no denying that the majority of vaping products are still being consumed in Australia via illegal purchase.
 
‘That is disappointing and not what the policy intended,’ Professor Zwar said.
 
‘The uptake in pharmacy of being prepared to supply the 20 mg has been terrible all around the country, and in some states, pharmacists can’t do it because the state regulations don’t allow. So, being Australia, we don’t do the same things across the whole country,’ he said.
 
‘It’s understandable some pharmacists are concerned. It was late in the piece that that access program was developed … it wasn’t something they were expecting and quite a few are reluctant to do so and it’s still proving to be the case now.’
 
Meanwhile, despite Government efforts to make it easier for GPs to prescribe vaping products by having options available that have been through the TGA’s review process for quality standards, Professor Zwar says for many doctors that isn’t enough.
 
‘That has provided some degree of reassurance to doctors that at least there’s a standard for the product. But many doctors are concerned that it’s not a fully tested medicine,’ he said.
 
‘Any other medicine has gone through a full approvals process, and you have more confidence in the quality and safety data. But, unfortunately, no vaping product anywhere in the world has been through that full process.
 
‘The ideal would be that there were products that had gone down that route and that we could prescribe them with the same degree of confidence we prescribe other medicines and pharmacists could dispense them in exactly the same way as other medicines. Now I don’t think that will ever happen, but that would be better.’
 
Despite this, Professor Zwar strongly believes that people would make more use of the therapeutic access pathway were it not still possible to so readily purchase vaping products illegally and says more needs to be done on the ground. 
 
‘I do understand that regulation is hard; they’re easy to conceal, they’re quite easy to smuggle and the resources for police and public health people to find them … there are other things they want to do,’ he said.
 
‘But unless it is effectively policed, they’ll take the easiest way.  
 
‘The enforcement has to be effective for the therapeutic pathway to work and it’s still a far way off from being as effective as it needs to be.’

Last year, the RACGP unveiled its ‘Supporting smoking & vaping cessation: A guide for health professionals’, designed to offer expert guidance in the wake of rising vaping uptake and regulation changes.
 
While the TGA currently does not collect or hold prescription or pharmacy supply data for any therapeutic goods, including therapeutic vaping products, a DoHDA spokesperson told newsGP the Federal Government will be funding the TGA to collect a range of data to demonstrate the lawful supply of therapeutic vaping goods in Australia.
 
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