E-cigarettes will be banned from sale to minors in NSW, including “e-juice” vaporisers with fruit flavours, Health Minister Jillian Skinner will pledge on Sunday.
One in seven smokers had used e-cigarettes in the past 12 months, with the biggest uptake among 18 to 24-year-olds (27 per cent), the latest household survey by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found.
Despite liquid nicotine being banned for sale in Australia, the delivery devices are legal and “vaping” has boomed. E-cigarettes in the shape of cigarettes, lipsticks and pens have become readily available in convenience stores and over the internet.
But Cancer Council Australia has argued even non-nicotine vapours, including the fruit and chocolate flavours marketed to teenagers, pose a health risk because they are sucked straight into the lungs.
There is concern at a rise in poisonings caused by young children ingesting liquid from brightly coloured cartridges that do not have child safety caps.
E-cigarettes labelled as not containing nicotine had been tested in NSW and found to contain nicotine, said Mrs Skinner.
If the Baird Government was re-elected, legislation would be introduced to parliament to ban the sale of e-cigarettes and related products, including all e-liquids, to anyone aged under 18, she said.
“The NSW Government is committed to protecting the health of our children and young people and addressing concerns that e-cigarettes may act as a gateway to nicotine addiction and tobacco smoking,” she said.
“We want to guard against the re-normalisation of smoking among the young, as it has the potential to undermine decades of successful anti-smoking efforts in NSW.”
The NSW ban is based on the recommendation of a panel of toxicology, tobacco control and air pollution experts, and has the support of the Heart Foundation NSW, Cancer Council NSW and Australian Medical Association.
The law will impose penalties of $11,000 for selling an e-cigarette product to a minor, or $55,000 for a corporation, with higher penalties for repeated breaches.
Testing by NSW Health in 2013 found 70 per cent of e-liquids sampled contained nicotine. Last month the NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant wrote to retailers warning that some of the e-liquids tested by her department had contained “high levels of nicotine that, if ingested are potentially lethal”.
“There have been reports of harm to children ingesting the liquid in Australia. The e-liquid packages often do not accurately detail the ingredients of the liquids and do not have any child resistant closures,” the letter said.
The Cancer Council Australia director of public policy Paul Grogan has previously told the Sun-Herald there should be a blanket ban on the devices and governments should be extremely suspicious of claims by tobacco companies that e-cigarettes can help consumers quite smoking.
“They [lobbyists] are not seeing e-cigarettes as a transitional market but a supporting market for smoking cigarettes,” he said.
In the United States, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has reported a spike in calls to US poison centres involving e-cigarettes, more than half involving children aged under six.
A one year old died in New York in December after ingesting liquid nicotine.
The tobacco industry has been lobbying for Australian legislation to catch up with the rise of electronic cigarettes among consumers, concerned at the rise of internet sales.