Teens turning away from vapes

Australia’s crackdown on the sale and advertising of vapes is having an impact on the country’s teenagers, according to new research which shows ‘promising trends’ in a reduction in youth vaping rates.
 
The latest update of the Cancer Council’s ‘Generation Vape’ research project, released on Wednesday, also shows a continued decline in the use of tobacco products, such as cigarettes and nicotine pouches.
 
The Generation Vape team, comprising researchers from Cancer Council NSW, the Daffodil Centre and the University of Sydney, has been monitoring the use of vapes and tobacco products among around 3000 Australians aged 14–17 years nationally since February 2022.
 
Each survey, conducted at six-monthly intervals, is called a wave.
 
The latest Generation Vape report features data from February 2023 – wave 4 – through to the latest survey, April 2025’s wave 8.
 
Data shows that, among children aged 14–17 years, vaping rates fell during that period from 17.5% to 14.6%.
 
Across the same period, there was also an increase in the same cohort never smoking, increasing from 92.2% to 94%.
 
Nicotine pouch use has also shown to have declined across waves 7 and 8, when young people were first asked about their use, dropping from 2.1% to 1.9%
 
Survey respondents also talked about the lessening appeal to try vaping, to be seen vaping, or to even be called a vaper.
 
‘It’s not a great label to be attached with,’ said one respondent, while another commented, ‘it used to be more like cooler … but now it’s just like kinda gross’.
 
Federal Health and Ageing Minister Mark Butler said the Government’s tough reforms to vaping legislation are ‘making a difference’ to vaping rates.
 
The illegal vape trade has been hobbled by increasingly tight regulations that began with the banning of single-use vapes in January 2024.
 
This was followed in July 2024 by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) making vapes only available at pharmacies, and banning all product advertising, then in October 2024 with further changes of regulations, with new requirements for devices, ingredients, packaging and labelling.
 
Since January 2024, the TGA and Australian Border Force have seized more than 10 million illicit vapes.
 
Dr Tim Jones, RACGP Specific Interests Child and Young Person’s Health Chair, said the study results are ‘fantastic’.
 
‘The regulation is definitely playing a role, but I think we’re also hopefully seeing that vaping is being seen as less desirable and far more like a dodgy business, which is what it really seems like from a health professional’s perspective,’ he told newsGP.
 
Dr Jones said that, given the lack of long-term evidence about the impacts of vaping, he is gratified to see teenagers trusting what their doctors are telling them.
 
‘We can’t sit there with mountains of cases and lots of studies,’ he said.
 
‘We’ve just got small reports and some early data saying “this is a worry”, but we’re talking to people about it, and they’re trusting us, which is great to see.’
 
Dr Jones is also glad to see that the use of nicotine pouches hasn’t risen among the cohort.
 
‘There were some concerns in my world that that was going to be the replacement [for vapes], that it was the new trend – but it doesn’t seem like that data is bearing that out,’ he said.
 
‘This is evidence that what we’re doing is working. And I think that consumer awareness of vaping-associated lung injury has been significantly increased as well.
 
‘This idea that vaping was a safer alternative to smoking, I think that’s dead and buried now, thanks to the work of both health advocates and legislation.’
 
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