Key Takeaways:
- As of October 1, 2021, all nicotine vaping products in Australia are classified as prescription-only medications under the Poisons Standard.
- It’s legal to personally import nicotine with a valid prescription, ensuring access to regulated products from markets like the UK and New Zealand.
- The illegal black market thrives, offering unregulated and unsafe nicotine products under misleading packaging.
- Dangers of illegal products include health risks from unknown ingredients and lack of age verification, along with financial penalties for illegal imports.
- Quit Clinics employ robust age verification and regulated processes to ensure consumer safety.
- TGA standards provide guidelines, including maximum nicotine strength and proper labeling, to ensure consumer protection.
- Limitations on imports include a maximum of a three-month supply per order and fifteen months supply annually.
Vaping laws and regulations
As the laws and regulations surrounding nicotine products have changed over the last few years, so have the products that are being imported into the country and sold illegally. In this article, we will take a look at the rule changes, how some products seem to have changed in response to this, and what risks come from using unregulated and illegal products.
When starting with the legality and illegality of vaping products1, we should start with the rules and where they came from. Prior to the rule changes regarding nicotine vaping in Australia on October 1st, 2021, there were an estimated 500,000 vapers in the country2. At this time, it was illegal to sell nicotine in Australia, but it was still possible to personally import it from overseas markets. While some markets may be less regulated, it’s worth noting that well-regulated markets like the UK and New Zealand3 have strict processes in place for reviewing and monitoring the nicotine vaping products that are allowed for sale.
On October 1st, 2021, an amendment to the Poisons Standard4 in Australia was made, which classified all nicotine vaping products as prescription-only medications. Because of this change, it became a legal requirement to hold a valid prescription from an authorized prescriber5 when purchasing any nicotine vaping products including disposable nicotine e-cigarettes, nicotine vaping pods, or liquid nicotine (freebase or nicotine salts).
It is important to note that the law change only impacts the legal market, while the illegal market still exists. The black market has been widely reported, with illegal and unregulated vaping products still readily available for purchase on social media and at some convenience stores. Many of these products have gotten around the changes by simply removing any mention of the ingredient nicotine from their packaging. Both state governments6 and journalists7 have highlighted this fact, and yet access to illegal and unregulated products still continues.
Illegal nicotine vaping products sold on the black market not only raise concerns about their safety profile, but also lack any age verification process for customers. In contrast, Quit Clinics employs robust age verification software, similar to those used by financial and insurance institutions, to ensure that all users are of legal age. Street vendors selling illegal products, however, have no incentive to uphold the same high standards.
What do I gain by purchasing regulated and legal nicotine products?
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)8 has created a standard for nicotine vaping products5 to create a safer environment for consumers. The aim of this is to ensure that when purchasing nicotine with a valid prescription, you are gaining an extra level of safety that doesn’t exist when buying illegal or black-market vaping products. As discussed, when companies are blatantly leaving off nicotine as an ingredient from the packaging, it begs the reasonable question – what else is being left off the packaging that could be far more harmful.
The TGA rules aim to create a standardization and set of reasonable limits for products to fit into when being sold in Australia. These limits and rules ensure that nicotine products being sold in Australia:
- Do not contain any added active ingredients, such as caffeine, THC, stimulants or vitamins.
- Do not contain known harmful chemicals such as acetoin, benzaldehyde, cinnamaldehyde, diacetyl, dethylene glycol, ethylene glycol, pentate-2,3-dione, vitamin E acetate
The TGA also set clear labeling instructions and a maximum nicotine strength of 100mg/mL (equivalent to 10%). Even at the allowable maximum of 100mg/mL strength, there are risks such as skin irritation and dosing errors that must be considered with a higher-risk product.
Risks of black market vaping products
When looking at the risks of black market illegal vaping products, there are two large areas that we see; risks to your health, and risks to your wallet. The more serious and urgent problem as discussed above is that we have mis-labeled vaping products being sold. We have no way of being confident that these products are safe, and what their ingredients are.
Alongside this, because they are being sold on the black market they are sold at inflated prices. They are costing people more for a lower quality and lower safety product, and also come with the risk of a maximum $222,000 fine9 for illegally importing nicotine without a prescription.
How do I know if I’m doing things legally?
If you are over 18 years old and have a valid prescription from your regular doctor, or from a specialist authorised prescriber, such as the doctors that work for Quit Clinics – you are able to legally purchase nicotine to help you quit or reduce smoking cigarettes.
The next decision is to either take the prescription to a local pharmacy that stocks nicotine products for your pharmacist to dispense, or to order online and personally import the nicotine products where most suppliers will ask you to upload a copy of your prescription as part of the order process.
Good practice if choosing to import from overseas is to look at well regulated markets such as NZ and the UK where products are produced in a strong regulatory environment.
If you are importing from overseas suppliers, the rules mean that you cannot import more than 3 months supply per order. And during the 12 month period, the total quantity of nicotine imported can NOT exceed 15 months supply of the goods.
In Summary:
The amendment to Australia’s Poisons Standard on October 1, 2021, reclassified all nicotine vaping products as prescription-only, impacting legal availability but not the illegal market. Prior to this, nicotine import was allowed despite domestic selling prohibitions, leading to a significant black market presence. Illegal products evade new regulations by omitting nicotine from labels, posing safety risks due to unknown ingredient contents and lack of age verification. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) established standards ensuring prescription-acquired products meet safety and labeling requirements, such as a maximum 100mg/mL nicotine strength. Despite these standards, illegal products are available at inflated prices, with hefty fines for illicit importation. Legal buyers with prescriptions can obtain nicotine through Australian pharmacies or import from well-regulated markets like the UK and NZ, limited to a 3-month supply per order and a 15-month total annually.
