A SINGLE law for vaping products across all states and territories will shortly be introduced through the Australian Parliament.
Federal Health Minister Mark Butler told the ABC yesterday, "I'll introduce it over coming weeks".
"Let me just say there will be still one legal pathway to get a vape in Australia," he added.
"They'll be required to have prescribed concentrations of nicotine, and they'll only be able to be sold through a pharmacy - not these vape stores or convenience stores - dispensed by a pharmacist, on a prescription by a doctor.
"So, if you're a hardened smoker, and you have a genuine therapeutic need for this, there will still be a way to get it, from your local pharmacy."
Butler said vapes that come into the country will have to have a permit from the Office of Drug Control, and there will be "none of this recreational vaping".
"There will be some legal ability to get a vape, but we intend to introduce the laws to the Parliament in the coming few weeks, and I hope to have them passed in the next few months."
Butler warned people in the illegal vape products supply chain, "we're sending a very clear signal through to the vape stores: your business model is going, you're going to have to think of a new way to make money, because making money selling vapes to young children, setting up stores close to schools and getting them hooked on nicotine is going".
"The convenience stores that sell a range of products - lollies and chips and all the rest that are legal - if part of your business model is these vapes, that's going as well and it's going in the coming months," he asserted.
"The plan is for the law to be introduced soon, then it will go through the time frames in the Senate, to be passed towards the middle of this year."
Butler added he can't take anything for granted, "as my predecessor, Greg Hunt, the Coalition Health Minister under the former govt, tried to shut these things down at the border, but he was rolled by his own party room within less than two weeks, and the regulation had to be repealed".
"The tobacco lobby still treads the corridors of the Australian Parliament," he concluded. JG
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