How the vaping crackdown will affect Ballarat young people's puffs

University of Sydney associate professor in public health Becky Freeman, who has led a study into teenage vaping, insists the ban on importing single-use vapes would address a loophole that has long been exploited - individuals being able to import nicotine vapes from overseas with a valid prescription.

And this had allowed rampant targeting of young people.

Single-use vapes are the product most popular with young people, Associate Professor Freeman wrote in The Conversation. She said single-use vapes came in a variety of sizes and flavours that have fuelled the rise in vape use among teenagers and young adults.

Ballarat Community Health health promotion officer Jacinta Walsh, who spoke to The Courier in June, said new flavours were contributing to young people trying vaping more from what BCH had seen in this region.

"Vaping might be a social activity initially but then they bring out new flavours and someone having a vape says you have to try the new flavour," Ms Walsh said.

The Courier reported in a rise of parental concern in 2023 about students vaping on buses and where lay the health responsibility for passive inhalation.

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BCH also stepped up its work with Ballarat secondary schools and teachers in trying to combat the pervasive problem of students vaping in class and in school yards.

Unlike the constant burn from a cigarette, vapes could often hidden in pencil cases or pockets and allowing a quick puff with smoke disguised in fruity flavours.

The second phase of the federal government's importation ban will bar all vapes, including refillable products, unless importers held a licence, such as a pharmacy.

Retailers will be able to sell nicotine-free vapes but Associate Professor Freeman said enforcing such a standard "essentially proved near impossible against an industry determined to addict a new generation of users".

The only way to determine the difference was in laboratory testing.

Ms Walsh has said most e-cigarette products contained nicotine, even if marked otherwise, and this was what got young people hooked and reinforced with savvy social media and peer pressure.

She has found too often young people and their parents thought vaping involved little more than water vapour and was better than smoking. Instead, young people were ingesting aerosol with chemicals used in products like weed killers and bug sprays.

All 17 e-liquid samples put under test in a Queensland health study in May contained toxic-heavy metals including arsenic, lead, mercury, nickel, chromium, antimony, aluminium, iron and nickel, along with known carcinogens like formaldehyde.

Parents or young people concerned about vaping are urged to contact their general practitioner, Quitline or seek help from school health teams.

Quitline's website vapingfacts.org.au has facts and conversation starters.