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Nicotine vapes are only available with a prescription but a thriving black market has emerged and use among young people has health experts alarmed.Credit:Brook Mitchell

But details regarding time frames,scope and funding are a work in progress,while the sale and import of black market vapes continues despite Butler’s stance on the issue.

The ministerannounced as part of the May federal budgetthat he would ban disposable vapes –millions of which are sold under the counter – from being imported into the country by enhancing enforcement at the border.

Nicotine vapes remain available at pharmacies with a doctor’s prescription,but it will be another major challenge to lift the number of GPs who prescribe them from the current rate of one in 20.

The minister’s major aim is to stop vaping among children:the Victorian Poisons Information Centre has handled 92 cases related to vapes this year – 68 of which related to one to four-year-olds –while six young people presented to NSW emergency departments within days of each other in June experiencing symptoms from vaping.

Butler said he had been working with health agencies,the Therapeutic Goods Administration,the Australian Border Force,Home Affairs Minister Claire O’Neil and education authorities to make sure the legal arrangements would be sound.

However,he declined to provide a time frame for the reform. “We’ll have more to say about it in the very near future,” the minister said.

“We’re committed to getting this right and committed to making sure that the arrangements across the country are perfectly aligned,so there are no more loopholes for this public health menace.

“That’s been the problem over the last several years,that there have been so many loopholes,that essentially a market has just flourished[for] those things that are so obviously and cynically marketed to our children.”

There was no funding allocated to the crackdown in the latest federal budget,but Butler said he would ensure federal agencies were “properly resourced to do their job” and enforce the rules.

Border Force commissioner Michael Outramhas previously told senate estimates that banning vapes at the border would not be enough to stamp out a rampant black market,as his organisation was already only managing to detect a quarter of illicit drugs making their way into Australia.

Quit Collective,a coalition of doctors who advocate for using vaping as a smoking cessation tool,said Butler could expedite the part of the reform that would allow all GPs to prescribe pharmaceutical e-cigarettes to smokers or vapers.

The latest TGA figures say there are 1963 doctors nationwide who are authorised to prescribe vapes.

GP Carolyn Beaumont,speaking for the collective,said pharmaceutical vapes controlled quality over emissions,flavouring,contaminants and nicotine concentration – a safeguard that doesn’t exist in black market products,which are often imported from China with no information about their contents.

“It doesn’t make sense to have barriers[to access]. Any type of red tape is going to deter doctors in general – registering is not a difficult task but it is time-consuming,it’s just one more barrier on top of doctors’ general reluctance,” she said.

“There’s no reason to delay. I feel like removing that administrative hurdle is probably one of the quickest,most effective things[to address the black market].”

Butler did not say whether he would bring forward doctors’ ability to prescribe vapes but said he was talking to the TGA about the issue.

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